A spare supply becomes really useful the day we have to take something back. In September 2015, ICARDA removed seeds from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The Syrian conflict had forced this research organization to leave its headquarters in Aleppo. Fortunately, duplicates of his collections had been deposited in the Arctic reserve.
The seeds that have been removed reach Lebanon and Morocco, where they are sown in November. It’s not just a question of moving bags to another shelf: the crops make it possible to produce new seeds and reconstitute usable collections. Harvests obtained in 2016 are already feeding new deposits in Svalbard in 2017.
The reserve does not replace the daily work of the seed banks. It retains a removable backup in case of difficulty. In this story, the journey forms a concrete loop: from storage to the field, then from the field to a new security reserve.
What we know
The 2015–2017 episode concerned agricultural collections, not all life on Earth.
To go to the source
References consulted on September 21, 2026. Linked pages may be in another language.
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