Part 3: Seeds for the Future
If you’ve heard of a seed bank, chances are it might have been the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which uses extreme cold and limited oxygen levels, like the squirrel’s den in Siberia, to preserve seeds for the future. Built in a remote arctic region of Norway in 2008, the construction was financed by the Norwegian government with the help of conservationists and charities.
Although it isn’t the biggest or most diverse seed bank, Svalbard does have the distinction of being the “Doomsday Vault.” It is constructed 390 feet inside a sandstone mountain, it employs a variety of security measures, and even if power were to fail, its natural location ensures it will remain cold enough to preserve seeds (which are individually packaged in multi-layer packets) for some time. Famously, it is built strong and secure enough to withstand environmental catastrophe and even nuclear war, hence its “Doomsday” moniker.
The Global Seed Vault isn’t your typical seed bank. There are no withdrawals and entry is restricted. And although it attracts the most attention, it is important to note that it in fact acts more as an insurance policy for other seed collections around the world, offering a heavily protected location for the storage of genetic material. In some cases, such as the aforementioned ancient specimens or currently endangered species, this genetic material can be exceedingly rare and therefore important to protect and preserve, and there is no better place than the facility embedded in a mountain deep in the arctic frost.
Every seed bank is different, though. Camino Verde, with locations in both Peru and Massachusetts, is a “living seed bank” that displays plants in a botanical garden while also doing genetic research and educating the public about the importance of trees. The Hawai’i Public Seed Initiative connects Hawaiian farmers from across the islands to trade seeds in an effort to increase genetic diversity among crops. The largest seed bank in the world, the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership, has over a billion seeds available for medical, agricultural, and biodiversity testing. This gives researchers the ability to study around 10 percent of all the plant species, the greatest concentration of plant diversity on Earth.
It’s important to understand the diversity and variation between these seed banks because each one has a different, unique mission and reason for preservation.
The Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix founded its seed bank in 1966 as part of their conservation efforts. Today, it contains more than 4,000 seeds of different varieties, stored in conditions that preserve them for research.
Many of the seeds come from wild plants, largely because plants found in their natural environment have a much greater genetic diversity than those grown purposefully, which is important to scientists. Increased genetic variety means more options for selective breeding, and since most of the crops we rely on today have undergone this process (whether for nutritional reasons or to adjust for growing in different climates), securing this diversity for the future is necessary.
Since some places in Arizona require permits for seed collecting of this nature, the Desert Botanical Garden must plan for specific times of year to collect the seeds, which are then cleaned thoroughly, dried, and frozen. The Garden is also the location primarily responsible for samples from 52 rare or endangered plants from the western United States, cases in which preservation is especially important.
They may be small, but seeds have the potential to grow into everything from the largest living organisms on Earth to the vegetables in a community garden. Their ability to adapt gave way to the early agricultural societies that changed humanity, and they will continue to be a part of our future. So next time you’re encountering a plant, whether it’s when eating a meal or admiring a tree, remember the importance of where it came from.
