The idea of seed banks as storage facilities seems odd to me. I understand that seed viability can be extended by proper storage conditions. Nevertheless, the shelf life of seed is limited.

What is the value of storing seed in a subterranean vault North of the Arctic Circle? How does this protect the seed any more than storing it in a freezer anywhere else in the world? What is the seed being protected from? Terrorism? I don't get it.

Doesn't it seem that growing out the seed periodically is where the emphasis should be and where the greatest effort is required to maintain species and varieties? The term "seed bank" would be better applied to a farm or farms or to an organization of individuals who grow the plants for seed on a regular schedule.

Jim

Okey Dokey. :)

trsinc,

Let me be clear that I am not critical of your posting that link. Nor do I disagree that it is interesting. It is interesting and I'm glad you posted it. It's a topic which deserves attention by both advocates and skeptics (such as me) of the idea.

Jim

Jimster, I agree completely. But do you have any idea how much resistance there is in the preservation community to "controlled propagation"? They have a laser-like focus on "in situ" preservation. Sadly, the traditional habitats for many endangered plants are becoming more and more unsuitable for them, due to development and hydrologic and climate changes. So the narrow methodology of the preservation community is placing these plants in even more jeopardy. They will compromise their high standards only when there is almost no genetic base left. At that point, the populations are so isolated and small that inbreeding becomes a serious problem, and the plants produce seed that is barely able to grow into a healthy plant. But if you suggest intraspecific crosses with plants from other locales, they argue that you are genetically polluting the plants at that locale. So nearly every road to a solution is blocked.

The preservation community will tell you that many endangered plants require extremely specific environmental conditions, and therefore cannot be good horticultural subjects. But this is completely contradictory to the common knowledge in the gardening community that many rare plants are extremely easy to grow in the garden. For many rare plants, a good grower could quickly develop a population of thousands of plants in a couple of seedling generations in garden conditions. The resulting seed crop could be cold-stored or used for re-introduction in the wild. I have found that proposals of this kind produce a venomous response from many (not all) preservationists. Or a cold silence, end of discussion, goodby.

In an ideal world, the preservation community would use ALL of the resources and strategies that are available to them. They would practice inclusion of their natural allies, the horticulturists, rather than distrust and exclusion and moral condemnation. They would follow a broad, multi-faceted preservation strategy, analogous to a diversified investment strategy, thereby maximizing the probability of success. A good leader does not intentionally turn assets into liabilities, and friends into enemies.

IMO, of course.

trsinc, you've opened the floodgates!

Thanks, Jim. I appreciate that.

Lilydude, I didn't mean to start a flood! lol

Both responses are interesting food for thought - provoking me to delve a bit deeper...

I think that part of the interest in doing this is because of the genetic research that is being conducted on plants and seeds. Most people have heard of the "terminator gene" that some bio-tech firms have put into their seeds. This keeps the plant from creating fertile seed. There's also a "traitor gene" that requires the person planting the seed to buy a chemical to apply to the seed the counteract the gene, thus allowing the seed and plant to produce.

One of the fears is that this technology could get out of hand and pollute plants that are not part of this company's product line. What would happen if cross pollination allowed the terminator gene to be passed on to the wheat or corn crop? It could cause massive starvation all over the world. If the crops that the world depends on to feed the masses suddenly stops producing viable seeds, what would we do?

This seed bank could be used to bring us back from the brink of starvation.

Part of the value of The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is that it stores seed at -18C without the cost of electricity. You could store in a freezer in the states, but there would be high costs to run those freezers. In addition, Svalbard is less likely than a conventional building to catch on fire. I believe part of the idea is that if a seed saving group loses their entire stock to fire or natural disaster, they can request seed from the vault to re-start their program. To me, that seems like a really good backup plan.

All that said, I do agree that growing out seed regularly is a better idea. But I'm happier with to have a secondary source of seed just in case.

Bellatrix

"What would happen if cross pollination allowed the terminator gene to be passed on to the wheat or corn crop? It could cause massive starvation all over the world. ... This seed bank could be used to bring us back from the brink of starvation."

"I believe part of the idea is that if a seed saving group loses their entire stock to fire or natural disaster, they can request seed from the vault to re-start their program."

I've read a lot about the "Doomsday Vault" in Svalbard and the above are two valid reasons why imho it's a very good thing and a much needed thing.

It is not and never was meant to replace farmers/growers saving seed. It was meant as a compliment to that, a further backup plan. Few people paid attention to the other big news released about the same time as info on Svalbard's opening was released ~ that Norway was dedicating a lot of money (millions I think?) to farmers' rights, which include saving OP seed. If I'm remembering right, some of that money will go to assisting growers in saving their own seed, not just fighting for their right to do it. They want people to save their own seed the usual way because it is the best way to preserve seed lines, but if some tragedy happens and the farmers lose all the seed of a certain variety, the vault is there as a backup plan to request seed from.

That's why the rule is that only the depositors can request seed, and they can only request their own seed, what they deposited. AND they can only do so when all other sources are gone. This is why another rule was put in place ~ that the depositor has to also deposit some seed with another seed bank. Then, if the depositor loses their seed, they can request from the smaller seed bank. If that seed bank is somehow wiped out, there's still a way to get that variety back, from Svalbard.

Svalbard is more meant as a backup to other, more local seed banks. If it was more widely know how underfunded many seed banks are, and how others just aren't run properly, there wouldn't be such a backlash against Svalbard imho. I can't remember the details of who reported the following, but I do remember reading about it from a trusted source. Some seed banks keep the seeds in boxes in their office hallway. One seed bank, when people went in to check it, had seeds sitting in a warm, moist freezer because the compressor had gone out and they didn't have money to fix it. Still another seed bank, in Iraq I believe, was looted ~ most of the seeds gone.

And that's not to mention how natural disasters can wipe out a seed bank. Earthquake, fire, flood, war ~ all things that can destroy a seed bank and all it's holdings. If the natural disaster is so bad that it destroyed the seed bank, chances are great that it's big enough to destroy most local farmers' crops and all their seed. No, this doesn't happen often, but it has happened. And is another blow heaped on an area who has lost everything ~ as if they hadn't lost enough already, they even lose the best way to start over growing their own food by using tried and true varieties. Now they have to resort to trying other varieties, some of which work and some don't. Imagine it ~ they need food and lots of it right then, but it might be years before they find a variety as productive as the one they had. That spells a doubly-bad food shortage on top of everything else they have to deal with.

Many varieties of food crops have been lost already due to similar circumstances. But they wouldn't have been if Svalbard would have been in existence.

(delurking)
The links to seed banks around the world at the end of the article was the most interesting for me -- just clicking randomly and finding out about what they do.
It was cool to see the last link the International Rice Research Institute, since my friend went to uni near there.

Very interesting article. I had not seen this before.

Thanks for sharing....Heather

I'm very much an advocate of seed saving and preservation of vegetable varieties (and other plants as well, but I'll limit my comments to vegetables for now). To me there are two essential principles to preserving vegetable varieties:

1. Any serious vegetable grower should adopt one uncommon variety, or a few, to save seed from and grow out periodically for seed.

2. Seed of uncommon vegetable varieties should be widely shared so that their survival does not depend upon a small number of individual growers.

Neither of these is addressed by the Svalbard project. I'm surprised to learn that Svalbard's policy actually runs counter to the second one.

Although I find fault with some aspects of SEE, they are basically doing it right by providing a means for large numbers of geographically scattered individual growers to share their seed and by growing out seeds of many varieties at their Iowa farm.

Jim

Help me someone!! I live in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, just outside of Tulsa. I want to know what kind of corn, that is sweet, will grow well here. I am not getting any help from Atwoods or Walmart. Can someone please answer this for me?

"1. Any serious vegetable grower should adopt one uncommon variety, or a few, to save seed from and grow out periodically for seed.

2. Seed of uncommon vegetable varieties should be widely shared so that their survival does not depend upon a small number of individual growers."

I'm right there with you, Jim.

"Neither of these is addressed by the Svalbard project." Again, growing out and sharing the seed isn't what Svalbard is set out to do. It's sole purpose is to be a fallback plan for seed savers and other seed banks. No one organization can be everything and do everything. There already is a great grassroots system set up for saving vegetable varieties, but still some of them end up being lost due to natural disasters, unforeseen circumstances, etc. Svalbard was built to address/solve that problem. That's all. It wasn't ever intended to be the only way to preserve seeds.

"I'm surprised to learn that Svalbard's policy actually runs counter to the second one." How does it run counter to it? If anything, it runs perfectly along the same lines of this portion of your second point: "...so that their survival does not depend upon a small number of individual growers." That part is nicely addressed by Svalbard.

Let's say there's someone out there who is the only person to have an unusual type of seed. The holder of the unusual seed sends a small portion of seeds to Svalbard. He continues to grow out and share the seeds. If, for some unknown reason, the only people who accept the seed from him all lose their seeds at the same time the original holder of them does, the original holder requests some of the seed he sent to Svalbard and is able to start over again. If he hadn't had the chance to send some to Svalbard, the variety would be lost forever. How does that run counter to the spirit of preserving unusual and rare varieties?

Svalbard doesn't stop people from saving seed and sharing them. What I see is a safeguard, a nice addition to the "preservation network" already in place.

Seems to me that redundancy in seed-saving can't be bad. Whether or not anyone would be able to get to Svelbard to fetch the desperately needed seeds after a real "doomsday" type of event is another matter.......

This is *all* about saving germplast (genetic info/etc).

It's pretty safe to say 99% of the saved seed will probably never be touched and there's very little reason to do so.

We don't know when a disaster will happen and "disasters" can be very mellow things that no one in the general population notices.

There's a reason trans-genetic grass seed is almost impossible to get approval in the US...and you can blame a near ecological disaster by Scotts in Oregon for that. These kind of "mini-disasters," if allowed to spread, could have really screwed up major US sod producers and their seed stock (an enormous amount are in Oregon).

On the "happy" side of things, it's a bank for future genetic material for breeding experiments. Some of our best hybrids have a parent (or more) that comes from some really wild-type seed (native wild seeds with natural nematode/etc. resistance with bad fruits, but good plant qualities).

FWIW...these seed banks are not for the consumer...they're for researchers, education, government, business, etc. Some will send out to the consumer, but that's not their main focus by a long shot.

This isn't a "Seed Savers" or "Sandhill Preservation" thing...it's political...it's about our food supply.

Yes, the private sector could probably handle this thing, but the political situation is so important and multi-national neutral (and cooperative) that it works (imo).

For those that need some "backstory" on the Oregon thing...

Scotts and Monsanto bred a roundup-resistant creeping turf grass. Yes, you read that correctly. Imagine getting THAT off your lawn.

Well, after it "escaped" 10-15 miles outside of it's test plots...well, you can imagine the rest and luckily it was controlled (though not without headache and a lot of fear at the time).

Why would you need to get grass out of your grassy lawn?

Just like there's many tomatoes for different tastes/environments there's different turf for different jobs.

Golf course turf needs to be able to handle extreme abuse and you need different kinds/varieties/cultivars of grass for different parts of the course (rough, green, fairway, etc).

There's winter grasses you "keep alive" in the summer by watering the hell out of them...there's summer grasses that die out in the winter. People like to mix/match their "big green useless squares" to get the maximum big green uselessness out of them.

...That don't even touch what stuff like a round-up resistant creeping grass would do it native vegetation competition in undisturbed lands.

If you indeed have a keen interest in history of Svalbard Seed Bank go and search the news.google archives. There are stories about it there dated back to 1990. (Many require a fee to recover.)

Knittlin covered most of what I intended to say... nice synopsis. With one exception, perhaps:

"Let's say there's someone out there who is the only person to have an unusual type of seed. The holder of the unusual seed sends a small portion of seeds to Svalbard. He continues to grow out and share the seeds. If, for some unknown reason, the only people who accept the seed from him all lose their seeds at the same time the original holder of them does, the original holder requests some of the seed he sent to Svalbard and is able to start over again."

As I'm sure you already know, Svalbard does not accept seed from individuals, regardless of the merits of the seed. To get into their bank, the seed would need to be deposited into another bank first, and that bank would need to back it up into a second bank. So in the end, Svalbard + two other banks + the original grower would all have the seed.

The good news is, that because SSE (Seed Savers Exchange) is now a depositor at Svalbard, it is possible for heirloom varieties to be protected.

Don't get me wrong; I am still somewhat critical of the project. As another poster stated, if the great calamity does occur, it may be difficult or impossible to get the seeds from Svalbard to the depositor.

Nor am I satisfied that all legal situations have been addressed... such as what happens to the seeds if the depositor no longer exists, has been taken over legally/politically, or lacks the means to propagate the seed.

I am also apprehensive of corporate involvement, regardless of what rules might presently be in place. Governments change. Rules change. Greed is a constant. There are clauses in the Depositors Agreement that could, IMO, be abused to benefit the large multi-national seed companies.

But for those that see Svalbard as the salvation from famine, it may never fill that role - or not directly. It is designed to preserve germplasm, not to propagate seed on a worldwide scale. That will always be the role of the the original depositors, their supporting governments, and the private sector. Were a major disaster to suddenly occur with one of the food staples (wheat, for example) it would take many years to multiply seed stocks, and in the interim, millions would starve. Sorry to end on a dark note, but that's the reality. Svalbard is something we hope we will never need to use.

No one "owns" most of the seed at almost all of these banks in practical application.

You fill out some paperwork and if they have it (and enough of it), you get it.

Granted, most of these places will not deal with individuals, but will deal with government, education, and business.

That said...even though these are very political organizations with a lot of paperwork almost all the seed banks share/backup/etc. appropriate seed with other banks and work very well with each other. The work of these people are generally meaningless when it comes to borders except the paperwork needed to move the seed across borders.

There is very little chance of the seed being used as a political tool because the system is not set up to be abused like that. The collections are not horded, they're generally shared because the point of the whole thing and all the money spent is saving the seed, not saving the home person's country.

The small "disasters" are the ones that generally do the most harm. Earthquakes, floods, etc...whatever...we're yet to see one of those that covered enough area to totally kill agriculture. However...disease and invasive pests are destroying entire species and these are the "disasters" that are on the minds of many of these "doomsday seed banks" even if nuclear war makes a better press story on the extreme side.

"As I'm sure you already know, Svalbard does not accept seed from individuals, regardless of the merits of the seed." Thanks for giving me the chance to save face, Zeedman, but actually I just plain got that one wrong. It's been a few months since I read much about Svalbard, so I'm not too surprised I messed up something about it by just relying on my memory alone. But you are right ~ individual gives some to his local seed bank and they send some to Svalbard. Makes sense ~ if it were individuals directly depositing, I could see the numbers of duplicates being rather large and the vault filling up pretty fast despite it's massive size.

I do like that Svalbard prefers (not sure if this is actually a requirement? Do you know?) 500 or more seeds per type for each deposit. Preserves good genetic diversity that way, plus probably allows them to send some seed back while still keeping some banked just in case ~ or maybe that's so the original depositor will have enough to actually plant a crop if it's an emergency situation? Either way, good idea.

And I also read that they keep tabs on age of seed and encourage (require?) fresh seed to be sent to them every ten years or so. Do you remember the particulars about that also? Requirement or not?

I do remember clearly reading their rather stringent language about who has access to their seeds. They said they work like a regular bank with safe deposit boxes ~ no one can even open the boxes of seeds except on request of the depositor. I hope that continues to hold true. Since it's Norway who owns Svalbard, I have no reason to believe it won't.

Now I'm off to re-read some about it to refresh my memory and avoid further mistakes... ;)