Arctic seed vault offers long shelf life

LONGYEARBYEN, Norway — The Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened recently on a remote island in the Arctic Circle, receiving inaugural shipments of 100 million seeds that originated in over 100 countries.

All kinds of food

With the deposits ranging from unique varieties of major African and Asian food staples such as maize, rice, wheat, cowpea, and sorghum to European and South American varieties of eggplant, lettuce, barley, and potato, the first deposits into the seed vault represent the most comprehensive and diverse collection of food crop seeds being held anywhere in the world.


At the opening ceremony, the Prime Minister of Norway, Jens Stoltenberg, unlocked the vault and, together with the African Nobel Peace Prize-winning environmentalist Wangari Maathai, he placed the first seeds in the vault.


The President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, and a host of dignitaries and agriculture experts from around the globe deposited seeds during the ceremony.

How much?

Built near the village of Longyearbyen on the island of Spitsbergen, the vault at its inception contains 268,000 distinct samples of seeds — each one originating from a different farm or field in the world.


Each sample may contain hundreds of seeds or more. In all, the shipments of seeds secured in the vault weighed approximately 10 tons, filling 676 boxes.


The opening of the seed vault is part of an unprecedented effort to protect the planet’s rapidly diminishing biodiversity. This “fail-safe” facility, dug deep into the frozen rock of an Arctic mountain, will secure for centuries, or longer, hundreds of millions of seeds representing every important crop variety available in the world today.

Good backup plan

As well as protecting against the daily loss of diversity, the vault could also prove indispensable for restarting agricultural production at the regional or global level in the wake of a natural or man-made disaster.


Contingencies for climate change have been worked into the plan. Even in the worst-case scenarios of global warming, the vault rooms will remain naturally frozen for up to 200 years.


The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is funded and established by Norway as a service to the world. The Global Crop Diversity Trust is providing support for the ongoing operations of the seed vault, as well as organizing and funding the preparation and shipment of seeds from developing countries to the facility.

Online database

NordGen will manage the facility and maintain a public online database of samples stored in the seed vault, which has the capacity to house 4.5 million samples — some 2 billion seeds.


Prime Minister Stoltenberg and Wangari Maathai, founder of the African Green Belt Movement and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, delivered together the first box of seeds to the vault. It contained rice seeds specially prepared with varieties originating from 123 countries.


The box was opened during the ceremony, and then resealed before being placed in the vault.


The building of the vault itself has attracted much outside interest due to its location and its unusual engineering, security, and aesthetic features. Its engineering allows it to stay cool with only a single 10-kilowatt compressor, which is powered by locally generated electricity.

Ideal temperature

The vault consists of three highly secure rooms sitting at the end of a 125-meter tunnel blasted out of a mountain on Norway’s Svalbard archipelago. The seeds will be stored at minus 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit and sealed in specially-designed four-ply foil packages.


The packages are sealed inside boxes and stored on shelves inside the vault. Each vault is surrounded by frozen arctic permafrost, ensuring the continued viability of the seeds should the electricity supply fail.

Long lasting

The low temperature and moisture level inside the vaults will ensure low metabolic activity, keeping the seeds viable. If properly stored and maintained at about minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit, some seeds in the vault will be viable for a millennium or more.


For example, barley can last 2,000 years, wheat 1,700 years, and sorghum almost 20,000 years.