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Each variety has a different combination of genes, and some of the corresponding traits – including heat-, drought- and disease resistance – could be highly useful in the future. It's impossible to know which ones will be required, however, and any variety could end up being important.
(One notable exception is the banana, most of which worldwide are asexual clones of the same variety, the Cavendish. This is a worrying problem for experts, as there is no reservoir of genes to dip into to help it fight new diseases – or for farmers to easily breed new varieties.)
Some of these many varieties of crops are vanishing, due to a combination of natural and man-made dangers – and also, sometimes, because they go out of fashion. The rate of loss will only increase, Fowler says, as climate change continues to take its toll on the world's plants.
"We think the effects are going to be fairly dramatic in short order," he says. By 2030, climate change could cause serious problems for agriculture production – and that is only two breeding cycles away.
To best prepare agriculture for climate change, and all of the other threats, conserving crop diversity is critical. And that's where the Svalbard Global Seed Vault comes in.
Conserving diversity requires safeguarding all the seeds from different crop varieties. About 1,400 seed banks, also called genebanks, currently house around 6.5 million seed samples across the world. However, their security is by no means guaranteed.
Seeds must be stored at cold temperatures, preferably -18°C, to preserve their viability. A simple equipment malfunction could render seeds useless. For example, a weekend power outage in Cameroon destroyed an important tuber collection.
In addition, seed banks are vulnerable to both human and natural disasters. Seed banks in Iraq and Afghanistan were destroyed during warfare. A bank in the Philippines was seriously damaged during a typhoon. "You can never quite anticipate where the next disastrous situation or catastrophe will be," Fowler says.
The trust therefore saw the need for a backup facility. "Insurance policy" is the term Fowler likes to use. In 2003, they began to develop plans for a more impenetrable type of seed bank. In February 2008, Svalbard opened its doors.
Other genebanks can send backup copies of their seeds to Svalbard for safekeeping. The idea is to protect the word's food sources by providing a refuge for genetic diversity. "It's an absolute treasure trove of character traits that will be important, perhaps even critically important, to agriculture in the future," he says.
