IS THERE A NEED FOR THE SVALBARD GLOBAL SEED VAULT AND ARE OUR GENETIC RESOURCES SAFE FOR THE FUTURE? EXAMPLES IN BRASSICA

Climate change, escalating environmental problems and need for an increased but sustainable food production puts a high pressure on an efficient use of the world’s plant genetic resources (PGR). There are today several immediate threats for conser¬vation. We are not only loosing material in nature and in cultivation but even worse – in our gene banks! Disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis and flooding as well as technical, economical and political problems may cause severe losses of valuable material in gene banks. These damages are due to the fact that there is an ineffective or in many cases non-existing back-up system for many of the gene banks in the world. With these perspectives the Global Seed Vault was established in 2008. The Vault is situated in the arctic area at 78°N – in the northernmost larger settlement on earth. Here permafrost is prevailing keeping a constant temperature in the rock of -5°C. The Vault has an extra cooling device for keeping the temperature down to -18°C, standard for gene bank material. Svalbard is a geologically and politically stable area, which makes it an ideal place for the international efforts for an effective and safe back up security system for all unique gene bank accessions of the world. Full capacity of the Vault is ca 3 million accessions, which is well above the estimated number of unique accessions. Brassica species are taken as examples of material stored in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.