Arctic 'doomsday vault' opens to retrieve vital seeds for Syria

Humanity has had to cash in on its insurance policy earlier than expected.

Deep in the side of a mountain in the Arctic archipelago is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Coined the "Doomsday Vault," this bank operated by the Norwegian government is meant to be humanity's back-up in the event of a devastating catastrophe that decimates crops.

But that was not what caused scientists to have to dip in and make a withdrawal. Rather, it was because of the most preventable of manmade disasters -- war.

Death, devastation and unimaginable brutality has become the hallmark of the bitter civil war ravaging Syria. In the midst of one of the most contested areas in Aleppo sits a treasure trove of food crop genetic material made inaccessible by war. 

An important storehouse in the Fertile Crescent

The gene bank in Aleppo, run by the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, or ICARDA, houses an important collection of seeds gathered from around the Fertile Crescent and beyond.

ICARDA's gene bank in Aleppo, one of the most important in the world, includes more than 135,000 varieties of wheat, fava bean, lentil and chickpea crops, as well as the world's most valuable barley collection.

"These are land races that were inherited from our grand-grand-parents, most of them are unfortunately extinct now," ICARDA Director General Mahmoud El-Solh said. "And this is where the cradle of agriculture [was] 10,000 years ago. In this part of the world, many of the important crops were domesticated from the wild to cultivation."

ICARDA needs to reconstruct its collection of genetic material stocks since it can no longer access its own vault in Aleppo and plant the lands around it.

And that is where the war in Syria connects to a remote seed vault in the Arctic.

"This is a rescue mission; these seeds cannot be replaced" said ICARA representative Thanos Tsivelikas, who is overseeing the withdrawal from the vault.

The ICARDA Aleppo center had sent nearly 80% of the seeds and samples to the Global Seed Vault as a back up by 2012, with its last deposit being in 2014.

And now, Solh and his ICARDA team have the challenge of keeping and reproducing one of humanity's most important collection of food crop genetic lines.

Scientists ask to open 'Doomsday Vault' 01:16

Moved to neighboring Lebanon

Relocated to Lebanon, Solh opens the door to a vault on the Agricultural Research and Educational Center of the American University of Beirut campus in the Bekaa Valley. This is where the seeds INCARDA received back from Svalbard are being housed.

Solh carefully shakes out a few wisps of what looked like wheat out of a brown envelope. It is the plant from which the wheat we eat today originated 10 millennia ago.

"This is a source of desirable traits including drought tolerance, including heat tolerance, including resistance to disease and so forth. So this had lived through natural selection for over hundreds of years," he said.

A 10-minute drive away and just across the mountain range from Syria, a new vault is being built by ICARDA.

To begin replenishing the stock, there are greenhouses nearby where the seeds will be planted, grown and reproduced. Once restocked, the seeds will once again become available for researchers and other seed vaults.

A parallel project is being set up in Morocco to ensure that humanity always has access to this irreplaceable cache of genetic material.

"Two thirds of material is coming from dry areas which ... are adapted to very harsh environments and have desirable traits" for drought, heat, cold, salinity and pests," Solh said.

Researchers are looking at way to improve food crops with existing and extinct-in-nature genetic lines that are more adapted to the challenges that may lie ahead with global warming.

The answers could very well be in these specific seeds harvested from a specific moment in time. Solh, holding up a small fava bean, said, "This variety could help us adapt to climate change."

"You know that climate change is a reality and climate change is changing the whole environment in terms of more drought, hotter environments and even new diseases."

ICARDA and others know that the past could very well contain the key to our future, though no one thought they would see such a mass withdrawal in their lifetime.

Sources: CNN