A team of Syrian scientists at the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) braved the terrors of civil war to protect a critical piece of global heritage, meticulously transporting plant genetic material from a seed bank in Aleppo to the Svalbard Seed Vault in Norway. Their actions to protect the region’s ancient farming heritage – nearly 150,000 seed samples collected over the past four decades from dry land regions worldwide – earned them the Gregor Mendel Innovation Prize for outstanding contributions to plant breeding.

 

The conflict in Syria presented the ICARDA gene bank with a uniquely specific challenge; protect the genetic wealth of regional food crops.

 

ICARDA is one of 11 such biorepositories in the world helping to preserve seeds that are used by plant breeders and scientists worldwide. They focus on crops grown in arid climates like Syria, preserving genes that, in turn, help promote agricultural development in other dry areas.

 

The Aleppo facility contained the world’s largest collection of barley, fava bean and lentil seeds, ancient varieties of durum and bread wheat, and wild crops collected throughout the Fertile Crescent. This region that includes Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq is the site of the earliest recorded crop domestication.

 

“We are entrusted with the genetic wealth from some 128 countries – a resource we cannot afford to lose as it ensures long-term public welfare,” Dr. Mahmoud Solh, director general of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), said in a statement. “Almost all our germaplasm collections are now saved outside Syria.” More than 80 percent of the globally unique collection of crop genetic resources stored at ICARDA’s Aleppo genebank is now safely duplicated at the Norwegian facility, the balance in gene banks around the world.

 

The ICARDA team drove seeds out of the country, using foreign connections to increase the likelihood that the seeds would be safely ferried across Syrian borders. Advised to leave the country, 50 members elected to stay behind to continue the germoplasm evacuation to the Norwegian bank.