The Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened for its 70th deposit on 17 June, receiving 15,387 new seed samples from 11 genebanks across four continents. The collection now stands at 1,401,285 samples, stored under permafrost deep inside a mountain on Spitsbergen. The facility is managed jointly by the Norwegian Government, the Nordic Genetic Resource Center, and the Crop Trust.
Two countries deposited seeds for the first time. Burkina Faso and Niger both secured samples with support from the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. The largest shipments came from the Rural Development Administration of South Korea, which sent 6,000 samples covering 50 species, and the John Innes Centre in Norwich, England. Sudan’s national genebank, which has been rebuilding its collection amid the country’s civil war, deposited 982 samples covering 19 crops.
The vault has only ever been used for one withdrawal. In 2015, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas retrieved around 38,000 samples after the Syrian civil war destroyed its genebank in Aleppo. Those seeds were used to rebuild the collection at new facilities in Morocco and Lebanon, and fresh duplicates were later re-deposited in Svalbard. The system worked exactly as designed.
SOURCE: Norwegian Government (regjeringen.no), 17 June 2026. https://www.regjeringen.no/en/whats-new/svalbard-global-seed-vault-crosses-major-milestone-1.4-million-seed-samples-secured/id3166080/
Crop Trust, 17 June 2026. https://www.croptrust.org/news-events/news/article/svalbard-global-seed-vault-crosses-major-milestone-14-million-seed-samples-secured
