Svalbard Global Seed Vault Receives More Than 20,000 Seeds for 2022's First Deposit

On February 14, 2022, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault has received 20,443 seed samples in 39 boxes from 10 genebanks all around the globe as the year's first deposit.

Two Norwegian ministers participated in this year's first opening of the Seed Vault. Sandra Borch, Minister of Agriculture and Food, and Anne Beathe Tvinnereim, Minister of International Development were present when thousands of seed samples were secured in the Seed Vault. The deposit includes seeds that were not previously represented in the Seed Vault, including nearly 100 forage species from the Australian Pastures Genebank and 50 crop species from the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK), Germany. The IPK deposit includes samples of wheat collected in the Austrian Alpine region in the 1920s—one of the oldest collections at the genebank.

The largest deposit of 6,336 seed samples was made by the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) from its genebank in Morocco, bringing their total holding in the Seed Vault to more than 100,000 seed samples, close to what it was before the Center withdrew seeds from the Seed Vault back in 2015, 2017, and 2019 to reestablish its genebank collection. The Seed Vault now has 1,145,862 seed samples of nearly 6,000 plant species from 89 genebanks around the world. This is the world's largest and most diverse collection of crop diversity.

For more details, read the news article from the Crop Trust.