USDA Donates to Global Seed Vault

Picture a dark day in the future, when a handful of surviving humans face the monumental task of restoring a sustainable food supply to a barren earth. A supply of viable plant seeds, like those stored in Norway's Svalbard Global Seed Vault would come in mighty handy. To help build the Seed Vault's collection, the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) of the USDA has announced plans to donate seeds from more than 11,000 plant varieties.

The first shipment of seeds from the U.S. will include 471 essential food crop species, including maize, soybeans, peanuts and sunflowers. Additional seed shipments are planned over the next 5-10 years.

The shipments will be coordinated by the ARS National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation (NCGRP) in Fort Collins, Colorado. As one of the largest plant genebanks in the world, the NCGRP now stores more than 730,000 separate backup samples of plants comprising more than 6,000 species.

Besides extinction-level events, seeds from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, along with plants from the NCGRP are used to help populations recover from more common, localized disasters, like war, drought, and destructive insect infestations.

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