Svalbard Global Seed Vault celebrates tenth anniversary
The entrance to Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Credit: Riccardo Gangale
The first meeting of the International Advisory Panel on the Svalbard Global Seed Vault will be held at some time during the summit. The panel is to advise on daily operations and activities of the seed vault. The panel consists of representatives from gene banks and other stakeholders. The Norwegian representative is Kristin Børresen from Graminor.
The seeds stored in the Svalbard Global Seed Vaults are packed in crates, each containing a maximum of 400 seed types. The crates are sealed by the gene bank depositing the seed. A single crate will hold up to 400 seed samples, and each seed sample consists of about 500 seeds stored in a sealed aluminium bag. Svalbard Global Seed Vault can hold 4.5 million different seed types, enough to store duplicates of all the unique seed types found today in the many gene banks around the world, with room to spare for new seed types collected by future researchers. Credit: Riccardo Gangale
Seeds from around the globe
The Svalbard seed vault was opened in February 2008 by former Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and Dr. Wangari Maathai, the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize recipient. The purpose of the seed vault is to provide a stock of duplicates of seeds stored in national, regional and international gene banks worldwide. The goal is to maintain genetic variation among the world's crop plants, thus ensuring that food and utility plants are not eradicated in local or global disasters such as war, terrorism and natural disasters. At present, the seed vault holds more than 5,000 plant species of important crop plants, such as beans and potatoes, in addition to grains and rice.
For more information:
www.nordgen.org/sgsv