CGIAR Centers Send Seeds to Svalvard Vault

More than 200,000 crop varieties from Asia, Africa and Latin America, drawn from collections maintained by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), will be sent to the Svalvard Global Seed Vault (SGSV) in Norway. SGSV is a facility constructed on a mountain deep in the Arctic permafrost capable of preserving the vitality of samples for thousands of years. Svalvard will be the depository of seeds of different food crops and agroforestry plants from all over the world. It is intended to ensure that seeds will be available for securing food supplies should a manmade or natural disaster threatens genebanks or agricultural systems.

“The CGIAR collections are the ‘crown jewels’ of international agriculture,” said Cary Fowler, Executive Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which will cover the costs of preparing, packaging and transporting CGIAR seeds to the Arctic. “They include the world’s largest and most diverse collections of rice, wheat, maize and beans. Many traditional landraces of these crops would have been lost had they not been collected and stored in the genebanks.”

The first installment will contain collection duplicates from research institutions like the International Potato Center (CIP), International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), and International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), among other CG centers.

The press release is available at http://www.cgiar.org/news/seedtransfer_svalbard.html