Svalbard Seed Vault safeguards 3,000 pea seeds for future food security

03 Sep 2020 --- The Germplasm Resources Unit (GRU) has contributed seed duplicates of its entire 2,922 pea collection to the Svalbard Seed Vault shelves for safe, long-term storage. Svalbard Global Seed Vault is the largest backup facility for the world’s crop diversity. The move comes as climate change and political decisions lead to risks for the genebanks, which are seeing an increasing need for securing their seed collections in more than one place.

“The germplasm we conserve needs to be safeguarded for our future food security. The germplasm that we maintain in the UK is widely and globally used and fragments of our collections can be found in many other places throughout the world,” explains Noam Chayut, GRU Manager at The John Innes Centre.

“But to have the entire Pisum collection duplicated in a different political entity is of great importance if anything catastrophic should happen here. One year ago, we couldn’t imagine this pandemic, but today we live in a changing world, it is our responsibility to prepare for the worst,” Chayut notes. 

Sustainable seed storage
The GRU is an internationally recognized repository for the long-term curation and provision of UK strategic crop and crop-wild-relative germplasm resources. The John Innes Centre Germplasm Resources Unit located in the Norwich Research Park, UK, is a Germplasm conservation unit and National Capability supported by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

NordGen is responsible for operating the Seed Vault in cooperation with the Norwegian Ministry of Food and Agriculture. 

Globally, there are about 1,700 genebanks, which, just as NordGen, work to conserve and promote the sustainable use of plant genetic resources necessary for food and agriculture. 

Often dubbed “The Doomsday Vault,” Svalbard Global Seed Vault offers free-of-charge, long-term storage of seed duplicates from international, national and regional genebanks and institutions. The ownership of the seeds remains with the depositing genebank. In the Seed Vault, they are stored under so-called black box conditions, meaning that only the institution that deposited the seeds can withdraw them.

NordGen is the Nordic countries’ genebank and knowledge center for genetic resources. Its role in the Seed Vault partnership is to handle the contacts with the genebanks, deposit seeds and update the Seed Portal – a publicly accessible database gathering information about the seeds stored in the Seed Vault. NordGen is also responsible for operating the Seed Vault in cooperation with the Norwegian Ministry of Food and Agriculture and the international organization Crop Trust.

“We're pleased that the Germplasm Resources Unit at John Innes Centre has decided to safeguard their pea collection in the Seed Vault. And we look forward to receiving more seed duplicates in the future. The GRU has one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of wheat, barley, oat and peas,” says Åsmund Asdal, Seed Vault Coordinator at Nordic Genetic Resource Centre (NordGen).

“We hold collections of strategic crops, crop-wild-relatives, induced and derived diversity. Many of our material comes from historical expeditions and some germplasms come from the exchange with other genebanks. For example, some of the peas we’re depositing now are originally from NordGen,” Chayut adds.

Along with the pea collection from the John Innes Centre, NordGen is also bringing in the first seed samples in the so-called new 100 year Seed Experiment in the Seed Vault.

The German genebank IPK has produced the first portions of the experiment material consisting of four crops’ seed samples. The experiment will investigate the viability of seeds stored under optimal conditions. In total, 13 crops are part of the experiment involving six different genebanks and will end in 2120.

Edited by Elizabeth Green