During the 872-day siege of Leningrad in the early 1940s, nine people died defending the library. This library was not intended for books, but for seeds collected from all over the globe. Nine of the dead were food scientists who starved to death along with 700,000 of their neighbors. The library they protected was the world's first seed bank, the ancestor of modern gene banks around the world.
Gene banks are biorepositories used to store genetic material such as seeds and cells. Their origins came from an avid Russian plant lover named Nikolai Vavilov, who dreamed of a one-stop shop for seeds from around the world where researchers, scientists and breeders could learn from and use them to fight hunger. Vavilov made 115 expeditions to 64 countries, collecting 380,000 samples for a seed bank in Leningrad and turning them into an agricultural gift so diverse and valuable that even the Germans learned about it. After the Nazi blockade and Vavilov's death in the Gulag, his idea evolved into something even more monumental: an answer to humanity's questions about how to preserve the genetic diversity of food and feed the world's population in the face of disasters, wars and climate change.
There are now hundreds of gene banks in the world. “Almost every country has its own national gene bank,” said Stefan Schmitz, executive director Harvest Trusttells Popular Science. And there are countless others besides them. At the Crop Trust, Schmitz and his colleagues work to support gene banks and seed banks (similar to gene banks, but focused on seeds) through funding, management, training and technology.
After a century of existence, gene banks have become vital to the future of humanity. In the event of a major emergency, this will be our Noah's Ark.
Genetic diversity and food security
Gene banks are treasure troves of genetic diversity, a vital safeguard against starvation. Think about the Irish potato famine: if all farmers planted the same variety of potato, a single threat in the form of a fungus, virus or insect could wipe out an entire nation of crops.
International Center for Agricultural Research in the Drylands (ICARDA) oversees two gene banks in Morocco and Lebanon. Not only do these gene banks contain incredibly diverse collections, but they are also windows into plant and human history. “We collect wild relatives of crops from this region, the first domesticated forms, primitive forms, and we have our own [locally adapted forms]- says Athanasios Tzivelikas, ICARDA genebank manager in Morocco. Popular Science. Some varieties of ICARDA plants appeared at the dawn of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent. Other, wilder varieties have even more ancient origins.
The ICARDA collection shows us how seeds have adapted to challenging climates over the centuries. Seeds evolve over generations to better withstand the environment. Many of ICARDA's seeds have evolved in some of the most extreme conditions on Earth and could be the answer to humanity's survival in a warming world. “We talk about resilience to climate change. We also talk about this kind of adaptation to extreme heat, salinity and drought,” says Tsivelikas.
Research and storage
In addition to their many purposes, gene banks continue to serve as the genetic libraries that Vavilov dreamed of, promoting agricultural research, plant breeding and agriculture. Anyone who needs samples can request them from the gene bank.
Plant breeders and researchers may find valuable traits for nutrition or climate resilience in a distant collection. For example, if someone is trying to create a more nutritious variety of wheat, they might find something that will help them in a list of seeds from a gene bank in another country. They can then approach this genebank with their request, and if their request is approved, the genebank will send them samples of the variety they want to study.
You can also think of gene banks as agricultural protection systems. In regions affected by natural disasters or war, “they provide emergency support to farmers,” Schmitz says. “The gene banks were able to provide farmers with old, adapted seeds so they could then propagate them again.”
They could become an important insurance policy for other gene banks. Genebanks send duplicates of their collections to other genebanks to provide an even higher level of security in case something happens to their own collection. Among gene banks there is what is called a “black box” system, where you can send duplicate seeds to another gene bank just for storage, not for research or anything else. These duplicates will remain yours and yours alone and will be kept far away in case of disaster.
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Backup for backup
The vulnerability of gene banks makes this additional safeguard necessary. Power outages, war and poor infrastructure can threaten a gene bank overnight. Just one power outage can be a crisis for a facility that needs to maintain temperatures at zero degrees Fahrenheit (-18 degrees Celsius).
So, in 2008, experts developed the ultimate backup plan.
They placed a huge global facility at the North Pole, in a part of Norway called Svalbard. Up there, as far north as you can fly on a commercial airline, the cold permafrost ensures that even if the power goes out, the seeds inside the vault will remain safe. Now Svalbard Global Seed Vault holds 1,378,238 seed samples from almost every country in the world, with room for millions more.
“Svalbard is nothing more than a huge reserve facility,” says Schmitz. “So that if one of the more than 800 genebanks loses its collection due to [a] thunderstorm, fire, earthquake or war, you can be sure that you have a security backup.”
Shortly after the founding of Svalbard, Tzivelikas' colleagues at the ICARDA gene bank in Syria began sending copies of their seeds to the new facility via a black box system. When civil war broke out in 2011, they increased their supply, reaching over 100,000 copies under the Svalbard roof.
And they were lucky. In 2014, the ICARDA genebank in Syria had to be evacuated. “It was the biggest disaster we know of for gene banks,” says Schmitz.
Tsivelikas' relief and gratitude for his colleagues' foresight is palpable to this day. “I cannot express how wise my colleagues in Syria were,” he says. “They were thinking about all the possible things that could happen.” Although they could not predict the specifics of this civil war, they were still prepared for it. Following the evacuation of the team, ICARDA established new gene banks in Morocco and Lebanon.
When new facilities opened, Tsivelikas was there. In 2015, he traveled to Svalbard to begin the process of returning duplicated seeds to ICARDA. “We managed to take from Spitsbergen [samples of seeds] to our new gene banks in Morocco and Lebanon,” he says.
ICARDA was the first gene bank to receive its collection from Svalbard, but there have been others since then. Now employees of Sudanese gene banks are following in the footsteps of those working in Syria. sending seeds to Spitsbergen at the height of the civil war. These seeds will be needed for restoration.
“There are many interesting examples where gene banks not only serve as a starting point for modern plant breeding and modern plant research, but sometimes simply help farmers after a catastrophe or natural disaster,” says Schmitz.
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