Amid Climate Crisis, Svalbard Global Seed Vault Gets a Huge Deposit

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, in the far reaches of northern Norway, is meant to be humanity’s last resort. Imagine it as the world’s doomsday garden shed: a secure genetic capsule, kept safe in case some catastrophe — a meteor strike or climate disaster, perhaps — threatens the planet’s crops.

The vault already had about 1.3 million seed samples from about 7,000 species, sent from all over the world. Last week, it received about 30,000 new ones.

The number itself is notable: It’s one of the largest one-time additions since the vault opened in 2008. (There are often three deposits a year.)

But perhaps more significant is the amount of so-called genebanks — organizations that store their own hoards of seeds in locations around the world — that participated in the latest donation, said Asmund Asdal, the Norwegian vault’s coordinator.

“It is more important now that many new genebanks in developing parts of the world are depositing valuable and unique genetic material,” he wrote in an email. Some, he said, made their first contributions last week.

Svalbard is not the only place where seeds are stored. But it is meant to be a vault, a mostly sealed storage place for use in case of emergency. Most of the work of seed saving, studying and sharing happens in the genebanks. Those banks are a bit like a computer’s filing system, in which documents are stored but easily accessible. Svalbard is the external hard drive from where files can be recovered if lost.