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The Svalbard Global Seed Bank is an international initiative operated by the Norwegian government to safeguard every seed and crop in the world. Located in the Norwegian Archipelago in the Arctic Sea, the vault contains deposits of around 860,000 seed samples and 4,000 different at risk plant species across the globe.

 

The purpose of such a project is to preserve the genetic data of seeds that are stored in local banks across the planet. There are, of course, local deposits for every different region in the world, but Svalbard was implemented as a last resort, in case of a regional or international incident (hence, it is called the 'Doomsday Seed Vault').

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In 2012, it was opened for the first time in eight years to allow for the deposit of seeds from the Syrian seed bank ICARDA (International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas), which were later recuperated when ICARDA moved from Syria to Morocco and Lebanon.

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Food security is a worldwide issue. It exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. In Morocco, under the French protectorate in the 1940s, the French government turned to the colony for food rations during the war, distributing food coupons only to the wealthier Moroccans and causing 200,000 Moroccans to die from hunger. These rations were commonplace for the Moroccan population, who had to deal with the food crisis on top of their inability to resist disease due to malnutrition.

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In order to avoid future crises such as this, organizations such as ICARDA are working worldwide to improve the lives of poor people. With Morocco part of the world's dry areas, the staff of ICARDA, based in Rabat, is working hard to preserve the country's critical agricultural resource.

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ICARDA (International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas) was originally founded in 1977 in Syria, being one of the major cities that constitute the Fertile Crescent, an area of fertile soil arching around the Arabian Desert (Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Iran). Due to the Syrian civil war, ICARDA had to evacuate the country, sending its stored seeds to Svalbard for protection as it moved to Lebanon (Beirut) and Morocco (Rabat).

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Once in Morocco, ICARDA requested the withdrawal of the Syrian seeds to work on their activities of duplication and research, concentrating their harvesting activities in Merchuch, a farm directly under the supervision of ICARDA about 62km away from Rabat.

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Dr. Ahmed Amri, head of ICARDA's Genetic Resources Sector explains why Morocco was chosen as a new location for the vault, despite not being directly within the region of the Fertile Crescent.

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OUR TEAM

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