Thousands of Syrian seeds that were withdrawn from a seed vault in the Arctic in September have been safely delivered to Morocco and Lebanon to regenerate ancient food crops lost during Syria’s civil war. The International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), the Syrian gene bank that had originally deposited the seeds in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, confirmed on Monday that 128 boxes with a total of 38,073 seed samples were removed. “We are delighted to be able to retrieve these seeds, so that ICARDA can continue to play a vital role providing highly valuable genetic resources to our partners (…) in the ongoing work to preserve crop diversity and meet the challenges we all face – natural and man-made – to feed future generations,” said ICARDA’s Director General Dr Mahmoud Solh. 57 boxes containing forages, faba beans, lathyrus, and the wild relatives of cereals and pulses were sent to Lebanon and 71 boxes containing seeds of cultivated wheat, barley, lentil and chickpea were sent to Morocco. The seeds are copies of those originally held at the gene bank in Aleppo which preserves more than 148.000 seeds of unique varieties of wild species and regional cultivars of barley, wheat, peas and beans, adapted to agriculture in dry areas. Although the gene bank is still operative it is no longer able to make full use of its facilities and recultivate seeds due to the war in Syria. Therefore, each sample will be planted and grown at ICARDA’s research stations in Lebanon and Morocco to provide duplicate seeds, which will be used to re-establish the seed collection and also be returned to the Seed Vault for safekeeping. The seeds will be planted during this and next year’s cropping seasons and also be made available to farmers, scientists and plant breeders in the region. “Out of the terrible adversity that the people of Syria are facing, the retrieval of ICARDA’s seeds from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a welcome piece of good news,” said Marie Haga, Executive Director of the Crop Trust, which manages and funds the ongoing work of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. “This proves that the measures the global community is putting in place to preserve crop diversity for future generations actually work.” The recent shipment is the first such withdrawal since the seed vault opened its doors in 2008. The back-up facility in the permafrost store 860,000 samples of crops from all over the world to protect them from man-made or natural disasters. (ab)