New Seeds to Svalbard Will Strengthen World Food Security

During the seed deposition taking place in Svalbard on Monday 14 February, seeds from two gene banks in Germany, from Sudan, Slovakia, the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA), and the Nordic Gene Resource Center (NordGen) were placed in the seed vault.

Both Agricultural and Food Minister Sandra Borch (Center Party) and Development Minister Anne Beathe Tvinnereim (Center Party) were involved in the carrying of NordGen seed boxes in through the gates of the vault.

The Norwegian government announces this in a press release.

The seed vault secures more than 1.1 million seed samples from early 6,000 plant species that are important for food and agriculture globally. 89 gene banks from around the world have sent seeds to Svalbard. Svalbard Global Seed Vault is the world’s largest and most diverse seed collection.

Climate-adapted species

“The many different plants in the seed vault are also important for Norwegian agriculture”, Agriculture and Food Minister Sandra Borch says in the press release.

In order to secure increased food production in Norway, new climate-adapted plant species are needed, as are plants that may contribute to more climate-friendly production.

“Small-scale farming constitutes 75 percent of all farmed land globally. In developing countries, small-scale farmers produce 80 percent of all food. At the same time,  poor small-scale farmers are paradoxically also most exposed to hunger in many countries”, Borch says.

Keeps growing

“In a time where at least 811 million people do not know if they will get the food they need every day, the importance of the seed banks cannot be underestimated. Making sure local seeds are preserved and used is decisive for local food production. For each time we send new seeds to the seed vault in Svalbard, future global food security increases”, says Development Minister Anne Beathe Tvinnereim.

“The fact that the seed collection originally destroyed in Syria during the civil war is systematically being built up again after outtake of seeds from Svalbard Global Seed Vault goes to show that the vault works as an insurance for present and future food supply and local food security”, Tvinnerem emphasizes.

The seed collection in Svalbard keeps growing. This time, the collection is extended withi 150 new species. Most of these are food plants from Australian Pastures Gene Bank in Australia. The German Institute for Plant Genetics and Plant Research in Leibniz (IPK) is also submitting 50 species that did not previously exist in the vault.

Building up lost seed collections

Some 6,000 seed bags come from ICARDA. ICARDA took out seeds from the vault in 2015, 2017 and 2019 to reconstruct a seed collection that was lost in Syria. The reconstruction takes place a.o. in Lebanon and Marocco. With this submission, ICARDA is back up to 100,000 seeds again, on par with what the country had stored prior to the outtake it made as a consequence of the civil war in Syria.

Utviklingsminister Anne Beathe Tvinnereim. (Foto: NTB)

Today, Sudan is one of the countries in the world that is most exposed to draught and less predictable precipitation, while also experiencing an extremely difficult political and humanitarian situation. Therefore, it is considered quite important that a box of a.o. millet and sorghum seeds from Sudan are deposited in this round.

The ministers were involved in carrying in seeds from Nordic countries. Amongst these is a kind of rye called ‘svedjerug’ that was secured from extinction at the very last minute. Svedjerug is a kind of rye that swidden farmers brought with them from the east to forest areas in eastern parts of Southern Norway some two hundred years ago.

Nordic seeds to Svalbard

Seeds from a special mountain timothy (Phleum alpinum), a rare species from the Hardanger Plain in Norway, is also included. The mountain timothy is related to timothy, which is Norway’s most important food grass. Today, it is used for re-vegetation of areas after construction work in mountain areas.

The ministers also contributed to securing seeds of bunching onion (Allium fistulosum). It exists in natural condition on grass rooftops on a few localities in and around the Gudbrandsdalen valley [in Norway].

Svalbard Global Seed Vault is established and owned by Norway. Operations is based on a partneship between the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Crop Trust, and NordGen.

This article was originally published in Norwegian and has been translated by HNN's Elisabeth Bergquist.