Svalbard Global Seed Vault: First anniversary

Svalbard Global Seed Vault: On 26 February it is one year since the Svalbard Global Seed Vault was completed. This was the run-up to one of the world's most ambitious projects to secure the food supply in the future. The day will be celebrated through an international seminar in Longyearbyen hosted by Minister of Agriculture and Food Lars Peder Brekk.

• See the program and speeches for the international seminar at Svalbard 

The theme for the seminar to mark the anniversary of the opening of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is: Frozen seeds in a frozen Mountain - Feeding a Warming World. Food crops under pressure Loss of biological diversity is currently one of the greatest challenges to the environment and sustainable development. The diversity of food crops is under constant pressure. The consequences are an irreversible loss of our possibility to grow crops adapted to climate change, new crop diseases and the needs of a growing population.

Svalbard Global Seed Vault consists of three separate mountain caverns that each have a storage capacity of 1.5 million seed samples. Photo: Mari Tefre/Svalbard Global Seed Vault

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which is established in the permafrost in a mountainside in Svalbard, is designed to store duplicates of seeds from seed collections all over the world. Many of these collections are in developing countries. If seeds are lost, for example as a result of natural disasters, war or simply lack of resources, they may be re-established with seeds from Svalbard. So far 400,000 seeds have been stored inside the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

• More on the seeds deposited in Svalbard on the Seed portal

Press contact for the Minister of Agriculture and Food: Ottar Løvik, +47 48 14 04 77
Seminar press contact: Elisabeth Koren, +47 41 62 67 33.

Svalbard Global Seed Vault: On 26 February it is one year since the Svalbard Global Seed Vault was completed. The day will be celebrated with an international seminar in Longyearbyen hosted by Minister of Agriculture and Food Lars Peder Brekk. 26 and 27 February, UNIS, Longyearbyen.