Name: Triticum aestivum L. (common wheat). Passport: UA0107997. Airtight bag: 17. Box: 341. Location: 38.4 square meter chamber at between -18º and -20º. Several seeds of this cereal and 51,003 other varieties of barley, chickpeas, forage crops and sunflowers are now being safeguarded in the newly inaugurated Duplicate Center for Plant Genetic Resources of Ukraine, in the west of the country. A door about a hand’s width opens into the frigid facility that protects the seeds that may one day play a fundamental role in the event of droughts, pests, floods, or the many other disasters that can ravage the earth and, consequently, the food supply for people and animals.
“Ukraine possesses an immense collection of biodiversity that cannot be found anywhere else. Who knows how useful it may be to us in the future. Its qualities can still be explored; it is like a treasure,” said Luigi Guarino, chief scientist of the Crop Trust, after attending the long-awaited opening of the center this November at a location that cannot be publicly disclosed for security reasons.
The sky is clear now over the seeds, but it wasn’t always so. In early 2022, Russian bombs rained down on the grounds of the National Seed Bank of Ukraine in Kharkiv (in the east), and the vast plant wealth of what is known as the breadbasket of Europe was horribly threatened. A team of scientists, technicians, and their families then risked their lives to secretly set aside a handful of each variety stored in Kharkiv in small sachets over the course of a year. The plan was to transport the duplicates in a refrigerated truck to a safe area. The mission was accomplished. In March 2023, they were transported to a temporary warehouse while this new center was being built. Now they are celebrating being in a permanent location, supported by European funds and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
The protagonists of this feat arrive in their finest attire for the inauguration. They board the bus early, eager to enter the immense freezer where one can only remain for a short time before their fingers are frozen solid. They enjoy a day of glory amidst the unbearable daily life of those lost to war, who are honored every morning at nine o’clock sharp. Suddenly, the driver stops the vehicle and gets out onto the road. He and the passengers stand and bow their heads. Through the window, a line of drivers can be seen replicating the gesture. The street comes to a complete standstill, and now it is the scene that is frozen for a resounding minute of silence. Then they go on with their lives.
“I’m not happy, but I’m not unwell either. We’re very glad today; it’s good news for us and for the world,” shares 74-year-old Viktor Riabchun, director of the National Seed Bank of Ukraine since 1991, when his country gained independence and the center established its headquarters in Kharkiv. He is aware that the undertaking they began three years ago now allows the planet to benefit from 51,004 powerful lifelines. “The most drought-resistant winter wheat varieties we have are Odeska 16, Ukrainka 0264, and Ferugineum 1239. And others grow without herbicides due to the formation of dense stalks,” Riabchun explains. The scientist was in charge of inaugurating the installation after cutting, along with other colleagues, technicians, and dignitaries, a bright green ribbon, chosen with tenderness as a nod to plant life. Immediately, the pieces of this ribbon became the best souvenirs of a day they feel is historic.
Seed banks have historically been an epicenter of geopolitical interest due to their immense value for food security. The Gestapo maintained a unit for collecting seeds from the countries it traversed. And one of the directives for the Nazi invasion of Russia was to seize the germplasm bank in what was then Leningrad, founded through expeditions around the world by the Russian scientist Nikolai Vavilov (1887-1943).
The Kharkiv site was a substation of this facility, which over the years has been enriched by contributions of both wild and cultivated material from the Ukrainian population. Today, inexorable climate change—with its extreme temperatures, erratic rainfall, and rising sea levels that salinize rivers—makes each of these seeds even more valuable. The solution to resisting the unbearable heat, enduring floods, or germinating despite the salt may lie within the DNA of each one.
“It’s important for people to understand that plants not only provide food, but also oxygen, fuel and medicine. Climate change is happening too fast, so we need these varieties,” says an enthusiastic Lise Lykke Steffensen, who was the director of the Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen) when the war in Ukraine began. She was among the first to offer help to Riabchun when she saw Kharkiv crumbling, and now they embrace each other, overcome with emotion, at the opening of the center, which includes laboratories and seed freezing and drying equipment.
NordGen is an organization involved in managing the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a universal germplasm bank located in Norway. It holds 1,378,238 varieties of 6,521 species from dozens of countries, and the FAO’s goal is to deposit a triplicate of Ukraine’s seeds in this secure repository. There are already precedents that reveal the paramount importance of this action: Svalbard returned seeds to Syria in 2014 after Aleppo, where its genetic material was stored, was destroyed.
“Our plan is to take a copy of our unique varieties to Svalbard. We need to protect future generations,” says Tetyana Zaugolnikova, FAO’s national project coordinator in Ukraine, exultantly. For three years, she has been involved in this extraordinary operation, initially considered an emergency, with a priority as high as opening a water pipeline when a population runs out of water during a war. When the seeds were transported west, it was classified as a development project, and the next step before the Ukrainian team travels to the North Pole is for the country to join the FAO’s International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, pending approval from the Ukrainian Parliament.
Joining the treaty, which includes the European Union and 155 other countries (excluding Russia), would add Ukrainian samples to the more than 2.5 million already held in its global seed system, to which they could also gain access; it would grant international recognition to Ukrainian plant genetic resources and guarantee them legal protection. “It also provides for greater scientific and technical cooperation, the harmonization of standards within the EU and internationally, and access to training programs, technical assistance, and funding,” explains Elly Barrett, a technical officer at the FAO, who admits to experiencing a milestone. “The seeds could have been lost, as happened in Sudan,” she illustrates, showing a photo on her phone of bags scattered by the Rapid Support Forces at the African country’s Center for Conservation and Research of Agricultural Plant Genetic Resources. Even so, in February, Sudan managed to deposit 19 species in Svalbard, including sorghum, which has been cultivated in the region for millennia.
The United Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) deposited some Palestinian seed samples in Svalbard last year, but the organization has reported attacks on its facilities by Israeli forces in Hebron. “When the Treaty and the Crop Trust conceived of strengthening reserves in emergency situations, they envisioned measures to withstand floods or storms, pests or pathogen outbreaks, but we did not foresee conflicts of this magnitude,” Barrett adds.
Now, the Crop Trust is working on an early warning system to provide maximum preparedness for all kinds of disasters and to begin acting before it’s too late. But peace is urgent. There are some seeds that cannot be stored in chambers (ex situ) and are preserved in living plants on the ground (in situ). For them, it is important that the soil is not contaminated with explosives, as is the case in the crops of eastern Ukraine, and also that it is not dynamited from the air. No planes fly in this country; the skies are reserved for the thunderous war, but meanwhile, from the ground up, the roots of a life in harmony are being silently planted.
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