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The vault has a capacity of 4.5 million samples, or 2.25 billion individual seeds. At its one-year anniversary, Svalbard held 400,000 unique seed samples. Fowler and others like him are still travelling the world on a rescue mission: save the seeds of as many crop varieties as possible.
The task has taken Fowler all over. His favourite place has been Ethiopia, where many of the crops have special drought-resistance and high nutritional qualities. "It's one of the most interesting countries in the world from a crop perspective," he says.
He estimates the rescue project will take another two years to complete. One of the biggest issues is picking places to search for new varieties. The trust is developing models that help pinpoint areas where useful wild varieties are most likely to grow. The models take into account current conditions, as well as climate change expectations.
They also want to make it easier for plant breeders to locate the traits they require. "There's no such thing as a Google or Amazon for a plant breeder," Fowler says. "They have to go genebank by genebank."
Plant breeders are few in number. For example, there are only six banana breeders in the world. The Trust would like to create a database to allow this small group to quickly search for desired seeds: "one-stop shopping," says Fowler.
"We won't get a lot of kudos or press coverage for that," he continues, "but the plant breeder knows how important it is and farmers will know the difference."
The same problem applies to the trust as a whole: it's easy to overlook a body devoted to collecting and cataloguing seeds. But Fowler knows how important their task is. "It's essential that [the seeds] exist if we want anything resembling food security in this world," he says.
Lisa Merolla is a science writer based in Boston, USA.
