The Svalbard Global Seed Vault – conserving plant genetic resources for European and global food security

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is the largest safety backup of the world´s crop diversity. It offers safe storage for duplicates of seed samples conserved in genebanks worldwide. Since its opening in 2008, 123 institutes located in 87 different countries have deposited 1,331,458 seed samples of 6,297 crop and crop wild relative species in the Seed Vault. European institutes have very actively taken advantage of the opportunity to back up their genetic seed material. As of today, 38 institutes located in 30 different European countries have deposited 178,999 seed samples in the Seed Vault. Details about seed samples, depositors and species are publicly available through the Seed Portal website. The seed samples that are deposited in the Seed Vault remain the property of the depositing institute. The germplasm is at their disposal if they should need it, e.g. if the material in their home collections is damaged or inaccessible. The Seed Vault has already proved its value and importance for securing plant genetic resources when the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), formerly having its headquarters and genebank in Aleppo, Syria had to relocate their genebank activities, due to the Syrian Civil War. Deposited seeds withdrawn from the Seed Vault formed the basis for establishing new genebank functions at ICARDA units in Morocco and Lebanon.