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Seed vault secures plant diversity

3 September 2008

Director Monash Sustainability Institute Professor David Griggs, Dr Cary Fowler and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Edwina Cornish.

A world expert has warned that agricultural production and the diversity of crops are seriously under threat, during a Monash University Research Month lecture.

Dr Cary Fowler, the Executive Director of Global Crop Diversity Trust, one of the organisations behind the creation of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, revealed how thousands of scientists, plant breeders, and farmers were working with the trust to identify and save as many distinct crop varieties as possible.

Costing the Norwegian government $9 million to build and the trust $200,000 a year to run, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, deep inside an Arctic mountain, is a "security deposit box" for seeds where countries from around the world can store samples of their native seed varieties to ensure they remain in existence.

The first deposits into the seed vault represent the most comprehensive and diverse collection of food crop seeds held anywhere in the world.

On opening in February this year, the vault took in shipments of 100 million seeds from over 100 countries. Deposits ranged 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.

According to Dr Fowler, interviewed recently on 60 Minutes, the opening of the vault marked a turning point in ensuring the crops that sustain us will not be lost.

"Challenges such as population growth, little new land, less water, uncertain energy supplies and climate change mean our crops must produce more food, on the same amount of land, with less water, and more expensive and less secure supplies of energy and fertilizer," Dr Fowler said.

"These are conditions that farming has never experienced before."

"Crop diversity is our most precious natural resource for improving and adapting crops to meet all future challenges posed by the current world climate."

For more information on the seed vault and crop diversity visit the Global Crop Diversity Trust website.

Transport expert Sir Rod Eddington addressed a full house at the State Library in the second of last week's Research Month lectures.

Sir Rod discussed traffic congestion in a world where concerns about climate change are growing, and big infrastructure decisions need to be made now to cope with population growth.

He also spoke on his international experience and his report to the Victorian Government outlining an $18 billion blueprint to improve transport links between Melbourne's eastern and western suburbs.

For more information on Research Month visit the Research Matters website.

Main page image courtesy of Mari Tefre, Global Crop Diversity Trust.