Global Seed Vault

March 14, 2024

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, in Norway, saw its largest number of new contributors in one day and now holds over 1.2 million seed varieties from 111 seed banks in77 countries.
The vault has been stockpiling most of the world’s crop seeds in below-freezing conditions, in an effort to maintain food diversity and protect plant species from extinction.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is situated in permafrost caverns on an island located within the European mainland and the North Pole.
The facility was established 16 years ago in 2008, through a partnership between the Nordic Genetic Resource Center, the Norwegian Ministry of Agriculture and Food and the Crop Trust.
It was designed to store over 2 billion seeds and guarantee their availability for future generations.
The Global Seed Vault houses over 930,000 varieties of food crops.
Acting as a massive safety deposit box, it contains the world’s largest collection of agricultural biodiversity.
The chambers are opened only three times a year to minimize the seeds’ exposure to the outside world. Inside, the temperatures are kept around -18 degrees Celsius (-0.4 degrees Fahrenheit).