The future of agriculture and food supply lies in the seed bank

One of the challenges of climate change is the loss of biodiversity and the fact that agricultural crops are struggling to adapt to new and extreme weather conditions. Temperature change affects growing seasons, periods of drought increase the need for irrigation, and heavy rainfall can damage crops by eroding soil, depleting soil nutrients, and causing rot.

So, how do we handle these challenges? According to Executive Director, Lise Lykke Steffensen from NordGen, a Nordic research institution and seedbank, the answer to this question might lie within the depths of a seed vault in Svalbard.

NordGen is a Nordic resource center for genetic research and a plant gene bank holding a seed collection consisting of 33.000 unique seed samples, some of them dating back more than 100 years. “Our mission is both to conserve genetic resources, but also to put them to use,” explains Steffensen. Seeds from the collection are continuously selected, analysed and studied in the search for plant properties that could potentially be more resilient in today’s climate.

“The value of the gene bank is enormous. Just look outside the window, we have climate change at the moment, and we need plants that are able to respond to the changing environment. We need resilience,” she explains. “We don’t know exactly what it is that we need in the future, so we have put it in the gene bank to be able to produce new plants which are more resilient,” she continues.

The seeds stored in the seed bank are open for research and breeding purposes. To provide NordGen users the best possible overview of available seeds, FOSS and NordGen have initiated a pilot study where all the peas in the collection are measured with NIR spectroscopy to predict compositional parameters such as protein and fat and to map each of their unique chemical fingerprints.   

Besides NordGen, which serves as the seedbank for the Nordic countries, there are roughly 1.700 seedbanks across the globe, working to promote sustainable use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. “Today we are dependent on very few crops, which makes us very sensitive to changes. So, to be able to have a robust food system in the future, we need the seed collection,” says Steffensen. 

However, faced with the risk of geo-political instability, local conflict and climate change, this vital collection work needs a back-up system. This is where the Svalbard seed vault comes into play. Operated by NordGen in collaboration with the Norwegian government and the international organization Crop Trust, the Svalbard seed vault is designed to stand the test of time, providing safe and long term storage of millions of seeds from all over the world. Free of charge. 

Listen to Lise Lykke Steffensen explaining how the vast collection of seeds at NordGen and across the globe can bring value for the future of agriculture and food supply in a world of climate change.