Securing the world's food production for the future

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault's purpose is to ensure that humankind can continue producing a diversity of food crops, even in the case of a 'Doomsday Event'.

- Janine Ryan

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault (Svalbard Globale Frøhvelv) holds the key to the world’s crop production. Often referred to as the ‘Doomsday’ vault, the objective of the facility is to safeguard seed for future crop production in the case of a nuclear war or other disasters. At present, there are over 1,2 million seeds kept at the vault, which is built into a permafrost layer in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago.

Gene banks ‘deposit’ duplicates of seeds into the vault to protect against the potential loss of seed due to mismanagement, accidents, sabotage and natural or human-made disasters. The Seed Vault is managed under terms spelled out in a tripartite agreement between the Norwegian government, the Crop Trust, and the regional gene bank, the Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen). NordGen stresses that the vault is a security back-up, and that depositing gene banks must ensure that they only send the vault duplicates of crop seeds.

THE VAULT IS LARGE ENOUGH TO STORE OVER FOUR MILLION CROP SEEDS IN OPTIMAL CONDITION

The facility was officially opened on 26 February 2008, and was entirely funded and built by Norway. Within the first year, more than 90 000 seed samples had been deposited in the vault, adding to the already over 300 000 Nordic samples that had been stored by NordGen since 1984. By the end of the first year, the vault had over 400 000 seed samples. In celebration of the Seed Vault’s 10th anniversary in February 2018, 70 000 samples were delivered to the vault, bringing the number of samples received to more than one million.

IMPORTANCE FOR FOOD SECURITY