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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.
WonderClimate resilience fact

When Syria's civil war cut the agricultural research centre ICARDA off from its genebank near Aleppo, it turned to the backup seeds it had stored in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Arctic Norway. Those seeds were used to rebuild its collections in Lebanon and Morocco.

Svalbard, 2015–2019

ClimateScienceFoodTechnology

The story behind the card

ICARDA, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, kept one of the world's major collections of wheat, barley, lentil and other crop varieties at Tel Hadya, near Aleppo. A genebank stores seeds alive for plant breeders and researchers, and between 2008 and 2014 ICARDA sent duplicates of 116,484 samples to Svalbard. The vault, opened in 2008, is dug into a mountain on an Arctic island and keeps seeds frozen at about minus 18°C. ICARDA withdrew seeds in 2015, the first withdrawal in the vault's history, and again in 2017 and 2019, until every sample had come back. Once the seeds had been grown again in Lebanon and Morocco, fresh duplicates were returned to Svalbard.

Türkçe oku
Tarım araştırma kurumu ICARDA, Suriye'deki iç savaş yüzünden Halep yakınındaki gen bankasına ulaşamaz hâle gelince, Norveç'in Arktik bölgesindeki Svalbard Küresel Tohum Deposu'nda sakladığı yedek tohumlara başvurdu. Bu tohumlarla Lübnan ve Fas'ta koleksiyonlarını yeniden kurdu.
Svalbard, 2015–2019

Kurak Bölgelerde Tarımsal Araştırma Uluslararası Merkezi (ICARDA), buğday, arpa, mercimek ve başka ürünlerin çeşitlerinden oluşan dünyanın önemli koleksiyonlarından birini Halep yakınındaki Tel Hadya'da tutuyordu. Gen bankası, ıslahçılar ve araştırmacılar için tohumları canlı olarak saklayan bir depodur; ICARDA 2008-2014 yılları arasında 116.484 örneğin yedeğini Svalbard'a gönderdi. 2008'de açılan depo, Arktik'teki bir adada dağın içine oyulmuştur ve tohumları eksi 18°C dolayında donmuş hâlde saklar. ICARDA ilk kez 2015'te tohum geri aldı; bu, deponun tarihindeki ilk geri alımdı. Ardından 2017'de ve 2019'da yeniden aldı ve sonunda bütün örnekler geri döndü. Tohumlar Lübnan ve Fas'ta yeniden yetiştirilince yeni yedekler tekrar Svalbard'a gönderildi.

Sources and further reading

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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