[London, 31st, Archyde.com]-The underground storage of the National Seed Bank near the battlefield in Ukraine is in danger of permanently damaging the genetic code of regarding 2000 grains.
The danger was noticed this month due to damage to a nearby research facility. Both the seed bank and the research facility are located in the city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine, which is exposed to the area bombardment of Russian troops.
Klopp Trust (in Germany), a non-profit organization founded by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) that reported the damage, said that only the research facility was attacked and declined to explain in detail for security reasons. Archyde.com might not identify the cause of the damage.
Ukraine’s seed bank is the 10th largest in the world, but only 4% of the stored seeds have the genetic code backed up. It’s a close call.
“Seed banks are like life insurance for humankind. Seed banks grow new plant species that can withstand droughts, new pests, new illnesses, rising temperatures, and more,” Stephen Schmitz, executive director of Klopp Trust, told Archyde.com. It will be a raw material for. ” “If the Ukrainian seed bank is destroyed, it will be a tragic loss,” he expressed a sense of crisis.
The seed bank manager might not be contacted. The Ukrainian Academy of Sciences declined to comment, and the Russian Ministry of Defense has not yet responded to requests for comment.
Researchers rely on genetic material stored in seed banks to grow plants that are resistant to climate change and disease. Now that the world is hit by extreme weather, seed banks are playing an indispensable role in securing food for the global population of 7.9 billion every season.
In the previous Syrian Civil War, the importance of seed preservation at the world’s largest seed bank “Svalbard Global Seed Vault” in Norway became keenly noticed. This is the world’s most important seed backup and replication facility.
In 2015, when the seed bank near the Syrian city of Aleppo was destroyed, Subarubar sent researchers in Lebanon with wheat, barley and grass seed samples suitable for the arid regions.
Svalbard stores more than one million seed samples in a storage on the hillside of the Arctic Circle. This includes 4% of the 150,000 Ukrainian seeds, or more than 1800.
The Klopp Trust has funded Ukraine for seed replication, but it is difficult to accelerate replication speed due to security and logistics issues associated with the war and the natural cycle.
Schmitz estimates that only regarding 10% of Ukrainian seeds can be backed up within a year. It is necessary to plant, grow and harvest at the right time before the duplicated seeds can be sent to Svalbard.
As an emergency measure, it is possible to give up the reproduction and send the seeds to Svalbard as they are, but according to Schmitz, it seems unrealistic during the war.
Syrian seeds are produced from the “Fertile Crescent”, the birthplace of established agriculture. Ukraine is also a global agricultural center.
“The history of agriculture in Norway dates back to prehistoric times,” said Grethe Helene Evjen, senior adviser to the Norwegian Ministry of Agriculture and Food, adding that many of the country’s seeds are unique.
According to Evjen, the ministry is ready to support Ukrainian seed replication and store all seeds in Svalbard, but has not yet received a request from Ukrainian authorities.
(Reporter by Maytaal Angel)
