Several hundred metres down the dark, cold tunnel of an Arctic coal mine, a passageway leads off to a wooden door adorned with the image of a Nordic goddess of fertility, which guards precious treasure. In the room beyond, the seeds of 17 crops were put in a metal container in 1986, in order to see how well the permafrost would preserve them far into the future.
The first are mixed for the 100-year seed project 鈥� a precursor to the nearby Svalbard Global Seed Vault on Norway鈥檚 island of Spitsbergen, it aims to discern how seeds will fare after a century of being tucked away.
Peas, wheat and rye were among the species stored in coal mine three, one of six former mines around the town of Longyearbyen. In the chamber where the seeds lie beneath rafters encrusted with ice, the coal seam is visible, but it hasn鈥檛 been exploited for more than two decades.
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脜smund Asdal at crop diversity institute NordGen says regular tests of the seeds have been recorded by pen and paper and left inside the boxes since 1986, so that future generations can continue in the same vein. The seeds鈥� ability to germinate changed little in the first 20 years. 鈥淏ut we have had a significant drop for the last 10 years,鈥� he says.
The seeds are all from crops that are important for food in the Nordic region, and they were stored at temperatures of around -3掳C, maintained by the permafrost around the mine. This is a lot warmer than the -18掳C that seed banks usually maintain. After 30 years, 9 of the 17 crops had retained more than 90 per cent of their initial capacity to germinate. Yet while barley was at a healthy 89 per cent, rye fell to 49 per cent.
Because drying is an important part of the seed-banking process, Asdal says it is unsurprising that the seeds with the highest moisture content showed the largest drops in germination.
The cold failed to kill off the pathogens found on some of the seeds. A total of 11 pathogens survived at 鈥渕ore or less鈥� the same contamination levels as when they were stored back in 1986, says Asdal.
Climate change has cast its shadow over the experiment. Even underground in the Arctic, the cold is no longer what it used to be. At the project鈥檚 start, the permafrost was -3.6掳C. Now it has warmed by about 1 degree.
This change of temperature shouldn鈥檛 make too much difference to the longevity of the seeds, says Asdal. However, he warns that 鈥渋f the permafrost disappeared, that would change the conditions for the project quite a lot鈥�.
It is partly for this reason that a new 100-year trial will see 14 globally important crops including brassica, soy beans and maize stored not in the mine, but instead artificially cooled to -18掳C in the Global Seed Vault. The first seeds are already being dried by NordGen, and in June they will begin another century-long experiment.
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