"Ask not for a Larger Garden, but for Finer Seeds"

Food security shot to the top of the global agenda following Russia’s war in Ukraine in early 2022 as staple exports were blocked and prices soared. Several million people have since become refugees, either internally or internationally. Also on the move was the Ukrainian national collection of 150,000 plants and seeds, including samples of wheat, barley and sunflower held in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city in the east of the country. 

“As the conflict intensified, scientists from around the world contacted [us] to sound the alarm on Ukraine’s main national seed collection held in Kharkiv,” said Kent Nnadozie, Secretary of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). “This unique collection is of global value for the future of food security and sustainable agriculture, and if lost then it is gone forever.” 

Yet this was not the first time that conflict has threatened our collective food security. Everyone knows about the horrific war in Syria, but few have heard about the country’s seed bank, which was wiped out amid fierce fighting in Aleppo. That collection contained thousands of culturally important seed varieties, as well as many more “wild cousins” – including a species of wheat particularly resistant to drought. That species was recently used to develop a variety of wheat that was able to survive three successive droughts from 2018 to 2020 when many other varieties failed. 

Known as Jabal durum wheat, the hybrid wheat variety derived from this wild species could feed human populations far into the future amid deepening climate change and worsening droughts. Fortunately, Syria’s collection had been fully “backed up”, thousands of miles away at the iconic Svalbard Global Seed Vault, in the Norwegian Arctic Circle – humanity’s ultimate insurance policy for biodiversity and food security. The safety duplication of these seeds allowed for their retrieval and then establishment of new collections in Lebanon and Morocco, enabling important research to continue. To better understand the current state of play and the long-run issues at stake, we spoke with Sarada Krishnan, Director of Programs at the Global Crop Diversity Trust (also known as the Crop Trust). 

OPEC Fund Quarterly: The Crop Trust has been working with FAO to safeguard Ukraine’s national seed collection. How important are national collections in these uncertain times? And how important is crop diversity to food security worldwide? 

Sarada Krishnan: The Ukraine mission was important because the national gene bank in Kharkiv was in danger of being damaged or destroyed by Russian shelling. So, in early 2023, FAO led a successful operation to move the entire collection over 1,000 km to relative safety in the west of the country. 

But that’s not the end of the story: Over the next few months we’ll be working with the Secretariat of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture to develop a plan for the long-term preservation of the gene bank. The first step is to move the seeds to a safer location, often in a neighboring country. 

The second step is to back them up at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. We recommend having two sets of safety duplications – because a war, cyclone or other disaster can destroy a whole collection in the region. Svalbard is not only the second level of safety duplication but simply the safest place on earth for seeds. 

We can draw an important lesson from the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), which was in Aleppo at the start of the war in Syria. The researchers quickly lost access to the gene bank, but because of the backup at Svalbard they were able to retrieve those collections and have since established two new gene banks in the region to continue their work: one in Morocco, the other in Lebanon. That is just one example of why safety duplication is so important. 

In broader terms, agriculture is an important part of any country’s livelihood because we all need food to live. There are global crops held at Svalbard like wheat, maize and rice, but national gene banks are very important for the conservation of local crops, which are also valuable from a cultural perspective. Almost every country has its own gene bank; some are cared for, but others need help. That’s where we come in – ensuring that genetic resources are protected in all their diversity. 

OFQ: Svalbard was named the 10th most influential project of the last half century “for building the ultimate insurance policy for the world’s food supply”, according to the Project Management Institute. It’s now been running for 15 years and holds well over a million seed samples, with space for 3 million more. Why is Svalbard so important in the context of climate change? 

SK: It is indeed the ultimate insurance policy, built over 100 meters into a permafrost mountain in a geologically stable area, way above sea level. But its importance goes far beyond climate change. Take the gene bank I mentioned in Syria: If that had not been “backed up” in Svalbard, the world would have lost its entire collection forever. And we’re not just talking about everyday crops. Svalbard also stores “crop wild relatives”, which are often threatened by deforestation and loss of habitat. It’s a second safety duplicate that is never going to be touched unless all else fails. If a national gene bank loses its collections, it can go back to Svalbard, retrieve its seeds, regenerate them in the region or home country when safe to do so, and then eventually deposit them back again in Svalbard. 

OFQ: What exactly are crop wild relatives? 

SK: They are the wild cousins of our cultivated crops and could be a different species of the same genus or belonging to different genera, but closely related. We’ve lost a lot of genetic diversity through domestication over the past 10,000 years, but now our climate is changing and the traits that we needed, say, 1,000 years ago may no longer be fit for purpose. We need to study the traits of these wild relatives and incorporate them into cultivated varieties. But traditional breeding takes time because we’re incorporating the good genes and desired traits from wild relatives into cultivated crops. 

OFQ: What is the return on investment from supporting crop diversity worldwide? 

SK: It’s actually priceless, because it’s measured in human lives. One example of relying on just one variety or monoculture is the Irish Potato Famine of the mid-19th century, which left millions of people dead and forced millions more to emigrate. That was caused by potato blight and demonstrates exactly why we need to conserve diversity. If we don’t diversify what’s in farmers’ fields, this can happen with pests or diseases, which can wipe out an entire crop. 

A more recent example came from working with the ICARDA gene bank and other researchers in Morocco, who developed a new variety called durum Jabal wheat, which is incredibly drought tolerant. The parentage came through a breeding program involving a wild relative of wheat, collected before the war in Syria and then incorporated into cultivated wheat, along with the genes for drought tolerance. When they cultivated this alongside other varieties during the harvests of 2018, 2019 and 2020, there was a drought in the region. Most other varieties failed, but Jabal survived. That gave the farmers the confidence to adopt the variety, which has now been registered in Morocco. It’s a prime example of using the genetic diversity of what you find in gene banks to develop varieties that are more climate-resilient. 

OFQ: How is the Crop Trust creating and maintaining a strong international framework for crop diversity and food security? 

SK: We are building capacity wherever we can. We have a quality management specialist who offers workshops to all gene banks, especially national gene banks. We also focus on data management to ensure proper curation and transparency. That includes what data to collect and how it should be uploaded, so that gene banks know exactly what material is held by other gene banks and can request it as the need arises. 

Our first priority is to fund the international gene banks, but we are also working with national gene banks to bring them up to common standards, at which point they will qualify for endowment funds. Our goal is to raise US$850 million in our endowment fund, and we have so far raised about US$285 million. 

A lot of donors want to see direct impact in farmers’ fields, but conservation of genetic diversity is the essential first step. Without conservation there is no possibility of adaptation, and of course no insurance against loss. Conservation is so incredibly important for our agricultural resiliency, and for our future food security. 

Profile: Sarada Krishnan 

Sarada Krishnan is Director of Programs at the Global Crop Diversity Trust in Bonn, Germany, where she oversees the planning, development and implementation of the overall technical framework of the organization. She holds a PhD in Conservation Biology from the University of Colorado Boulder, USA.