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The concrete entrance building of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, with the vault’s name on its side wall, stands in deep snow under a pale pink and blue sky; a metal footbridge leads to its door.
WonderScience fact

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, dug into a mountain on a Norwegian Arctic island, stores duplicate seed samples from genebanks around the world. The original collections stay in use elsewhere; Svalbard is the safety copy.

NordGen / Crop Trust

ScienceNatureFood

The story behind the card

A genebank keeps seeds of crop varieties and their wild relatives so that breeders and researchers can use them. The Svalbard vault opened on 26 February 2008 and is run jointly by the Norwegian government, the Crop Trust and the Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen). The seeds are kept at about -18°C, and depositors keep ownership under a 'black box' system: only the institution that deposited a box can open or withdraw it. The backup has been needed. When the war in Syria cut off the main genebank of the international research centre ICARDA near Aleppo, ICARDA withdrew samples from Svalbard in 2015, and again in 2017, to rebuild its collection in Lebanon and Morocco. These remain the only withdrawals.

Türkçe oku
Svalbard Küresel Tohum Deposu, Kuzey Kutup Bölgesi'ndeki bir Norveç adasında dağın içine oyulmuştur ve dünyadaki gen bankalarının tohumlarını yedek olarak saklar. Asıl koleksiyonlar kendi yerlerinde kullanılmaya devam eder; Svalbard'dakiler güvenlik kopyasıdır.

Gen bankası, ıslahçıların ve araştırmacıların kullanabilmesi için tarım bitkilerinin çeşitlerini ve yabani akrabalarını tohum hâlinde saklayan kurumdur. Svalbard'daki depo 26 Şubat 2008'de açıldı; Norveç hükûmeti, Crop Trust ve Kuzey Ülkeleri Genetik Kaynaklar Merkezi (NordGen) tarafından ortaklaşa yönetilir. Tohumlar yaklaşık -18°C'de tutulur ve “kara kutu” sistemi uygulanır: Tohumlar gönderen kurumun malı olarak kalır, kutuyu da yalnızca o kurum açabilir ya da geri alabilir. Bu yedeğe gerçekten ihtiyaç duyuldu. Suriye'deki savaş, uluslararası araştırma merkezi ICARDA'nın Halep yakınlarındaki ana gen bankasına erişimi kesince ICARDA 2015'te ve 2017'de Svalbard'dan tohum çekerek koleksiyonunu Lübnan'da ve Fas'ta yeniden kurdu. Bunlar bugüne kadarki tek geri çekmelerdir.

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Image details

The entrance to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault near Longyearbyen, Norway, 26 February 2025.

Photo: Michael Major for Crop Trust, 26 February 2025, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.

Image source · CC BY-SA 4.0

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Background reading: Svalbard Global Seed Vault
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