Buried seed vault guards thousands of crop varieties

Some of the varieties sent to Svalbard were also once used for healing and medicinal purposes, and today the red pigment in amaranth stems gives a rich red color to colada morada, a traditional South American beverage drunk in Ecuador during its annual Day of the Dead observance.

failing refrigeration systems and budget cuts.

Another contribution by the NPGS included several subspecies of barley that were first imported to the United States in 1938. These grains are modern varieties of “Betzes” barley, an old German variety that was grown in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and is now the ancestor of 18 modern varieties growing in the region, including the malting barley known as “Klages,” a favorite in America’s expanding craft beer movement.

Although the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is sometimes referred to as the “Doomsday Seed Vault” because of its role in protecting global agriculture systems from natural or man-made disasters, the part it plays in protecting global seed diversity is important even today. Seed banks in Iraq and Afghanistan have already been destroyed in the conflict there, and another was looted during the uprising in Egypt last year.

It is important to examine and preserve as many varieties of seeds as possible because even those that may not seem important now could turn out to be a critical link to survival in years to come. Some varieties that were first collected in the 1970s and 1980s, for example, have recently been found to have very high flood or drought tolerance, rendering them incredibly valuable as climate change increases the frequency and severity of each of these extremes.

• Eleanor Fausold is a research intern with the Nourishing the Planet project.

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• This article originally appeared at Nourishing the Planet, a blog published by the Worldwatch Institute.

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