The 100 year seed storage experiment in Svalbard Global Seed Vault

How long can seeds survive? This question is crucial for genebanks and research institutions working with plants and seeds. Therefore, an experiment is now being launched to investigate the lifespan of seeds stored in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The experiment, which includes seeds from 13 crops important to global food production, will not be completed for another hundred years.

On 27 August, 2020, the first seed samples included in the experiment were placed in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The samples of barley, peas, wheat, and lettuce were sent by the German gene bank IPK, one of the partners in the project led by the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre, NordGen. In February 2025, the final seed samples were deposited in the vault’s chamber, which maintains a temperature of –18°C.

Seeds cannot live forever, but seeds from many food and forage crops can maintain high germination capacity for a very long time if they are properly dried and stored at sub-zero temperatures. Exactly how long, however, has not been fully determined. It is assumed that seeds from many species can survive for centuries, some even for more than a thousand years. In total, six gene banks are participating in the new experiment led by NordGen and funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Agriculture and Food.

A large safety deposit box for seeds

Gene banks regularly test the seed samples in their collections to ensure new seeds can be produced in time and to guarantee that the genetic resources stored in the seeds remain available for research and plant breeding. In the Svalbard Seed Vault, genebanks can store backup copies of their seed collections to prevent them from being lost in case of disaster.

The first seed samples will be retrieved and tested in 2030. After that, identical samples will be tested every ten years until 2120, one hundred years from now. Results and reports from the experiment will be published throughout the project, thereby helping improve procedures and guidelines for gene banks in general as well as for the long-term storage of seeds in the Seed Vault.

The genebanks participating in the project are:

• The National Rice Seed Storage Laboratory for Genetic Resources (NRSSL), Thailand
• The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), India
• Instituto Nacional de Investigação Agrária (INIAV), Portugal
• Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária (Embrapa), Brazil
• The Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK), Germany
• The Nordic Genetic Resource Centre (NordGen), Sweden, which also leads the project