Russian seed vault threatened

Michael Lucivero

16 years ago

The future of the world’s first seed bank, maintained by the Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry near St. Petersburg, Russia, is threatened by real estate developers looking to build new homes on the prime real estate owned by the Institute.

According to the Washington Post,

The station was founded in 1924 by Nikolai Vavilov, a Russian botanist and geneticist who created the idea of seed banks as repositories of plant diversity that could be used to breed new varieties in response to threats to food production.

The Institute grows the “…one of the world’s largest field collections of fruits and berries, …[and it] also has a rich variety of grasses and grains.” Almost all of the plant varieties that are being preserved are not available anywhere else in the world.

This is not the first challenge to the survival of the seed vault. During World War II, when St. Petersburg was known as Leningrad, the seed vault was threatened by a siege of the city. As food became more and more scarce, 12 of the scientists continued guarding the seed vault and its contents, dying by starvation in the process.

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev weighed in on the seed vault, instructing that an investigation would be launched. Activists started a Twitter campaign to draw the attention of Medvedev, who recently started using the service.

Posted by Michael Lucivero.