When seeds must be locked in a vault

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is operated as part of a project by the Global Crop Diversity Trust (GCDT), which works to safeguard crop diversity. It is located on, or, more precisely, inside the Platåberget, a flat-topped mountain close to the Norwegian town of Longyearbyen on the island of Spitsbergen. The Seed Vault is just one of some 1,400 seed storage facilities globally, but it is the largest and the only one to operate without an explicit research mandate. Its main purpose is to securely store a minimum number of seeds for the world’s main food crops, such as rice, corn, wheat, potatoes, fruit, nuts and root vegetables. In the event of a disaster, these seeds would then be shipped out for growing. The Norwegian government covers the cost of storage, which is provided free of charge to supplier countries.

Over two billion seeds

Following initial attempts to establish a facility in an abandoned coal mine during the 1980s, the ground-breaking ceremony for this ambitious project was held in summer 2006. The Seed Vault commenced operation in late 2007 and soon began compiling its biological database, so to speak. The goal is to store up to 4.5 million seed samples at the facility. With 500 seeds per sample, this will be an incredible 2.25 billion seeds!
Once the collection process is complete, the plan is for the Seed Vault to be maintained and monitored remotely, with no staff on site. Even the COVID-19 pandemic posed no risk to the facility.

The Seed Vault cost some 45 million Norwegian kroner (9 million US dollars) to build, with construction funded entirely by the Norwegian government. The facility had to be retrofitted in 2018 for climate-related reasons, which cost as much again, but more about that later. Ongoing operating costs are borne by the GCDT and currently stand at around 280,000 US dollars per year, a bargain compared with what the conserved DNA would actually be worth if the worst came to the worst.

Doomsday vault

The facility has been designed exclusively for the secure storage of seed duplicates. This means that, unlike most other seed banks, the Seed Vault does not work with the seeds. International seed banks deliver seeds to be stored in the Vault, but these seeds remain their property and can only be withdrawn at their request. The first time this happened was when seeds were withdrawn to be cultivated for Syria after the turmoil wrought by the bloody civil war made it impossible to access the original specimens in the state seed bank.

Food security vault

With minimal tectonic activity and a layer of permafrost to aid the technical preservation process, Spitsbergen was the ideal choice of location. Situated 130 meters above sea level, the Seed Vault would remain dry even if the polar ice caps were to melt (which, it is claimed, would cause sea levels to rise by 60 meters). The cooling units, which cool the seeds to the internationally recommended standard of -18°C, are powered with electricity generated from locally mined coal. Were the systems to fail, it would take several weeks at least until the temperature of the facility rose to -3°C, the same as that of the surrounding bedrock. It is estimated that up to two centuries will pass before the Seed Vault warms to 0°C.

The building resembles an underground bunker, stretching 120 meters into an old coal mine. The entrance is the only part of the facility above ground and leads to a long passageway, at the end of which three storage chambers, each measuring 27 meters long, 10 meters wide and six meters high, are built into the rock. The chambers are encased in reinforced concrete and secured with two thick steel doors, which should allow them to withstand a nuclear blast or a plane crash. The tunnel entrance is separated from the chamber doors by five securely locked doors for which staff hold the keys. But not everyone is permitted access to every room. Better safe than sorry.

Global warming underestimated?

Even before the end of 2008, when it had been open for less than one year, the Seed Vault was hit by serious structural problems, brought about by the gradual thawing of the permafrost at its entrance. The structural integrity of the facility was at risk and its steel casing began to warp, necessitating urgent retrofitting work.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was originally designed to allow the seeds within it to survive for a long period of time without human intervention, even in the event of a total cooling system failure. Nonetheless, a warm spring in 2017 resulted in meltwater from the permafrost penetrating the facility’s entrance tunnel and subsequently freezing. Swift action was taken, with more than 10 million euros worth of improvements made to the vault to enable its continued operation in the face of a forecast average temperature rise of more than 8°C over the next 80 years. Now, additional drainage channels, grilles and a range of pumps ensure the facility remains dry. Watertight walls have also been installed to protect the storage shelves.

Cooling for countless varieties

With the storage chambers maintained at a consistently cool -18°C and the permafrost providing an additional layer of protection, experts estimate that the seeds could be preserved for between 55 and 10,000-plus years, depending, for example, on whether the varieties in question are sunflower or pea seeds. To achieve the best results, older seeds are replaced on an ongoing basis.

As of May 2024, this well cooled seed bank contains over 1.2 million specimens, representing over 13,000 years of our agricultural history. There are, for instance, 70,000 varieties of rice and 15,000 varieties of bean in the cooled chambers. Just this last March, cargo-partner transported a number of these 1.2 million seeds to the Arctic Ocean, in this case safeguarding the precious range of seed from the central Balkans region for future generations.

Demanding delivery requirements

Our experienced cargo-partner team in Bosnia and Herzegovina faced a number of challenges in this undertaking. First, the seeds are highly sensitive items of cargo and so had to be handled carefully in accordance with strict requirements. Second, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault’s remote location in the Arctic Circle meant precision planning was required to get the shipment to its destination. To ensure a smooth delivery, the team had to consider the Arctic climate conditions. And then there was the tight schedule, with delays potentially resulting in the seeds being damaged.

But, just as they had done with a similarly cool assignment for an Antarctic expedition at the world’s other pole, our team came up with the goods this time too. Thanks to our long-standing experience and excellent contacts in the air freight sector, we completed the task assigned to us by the Bosnian agricultural institute swiftly and professionally. Our team kept a close eye on loading procedures at each stage of the transportation process to ensure that the seeds remained intact. State-of-the-art tracking tools were indispensable to us for monitoring temperature and humidity in real time. After all, an unexpected disturbance could have caused premature germination, for example, which would have prevented the successful storage of the seeds.

cargo-partner facilitates biodiversity

After landing on Spitzbergen, the carefully packaged boxes of seed were put through an x-ray scanner to check that no foreign materials had found their way into them by mistake. The sealed containers were then taken to the vault by staff from the seed bank and subsequently categorized, with nanofilm (containing all relevant information) applied to the outside of the sample bag. Regional varieties of tomato, okra, pumpkin, hops, and many different varieties of wheat are now being stored on Spitzbergen.
Incidentally, stereotypical glass vials were scrapped back in 2004 as the receptacle of choice for storing seeds at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, with small aluminum bags proving the most effective option to date...