How We Saved Climate-Smart Seeds from the Conflict in Syria

Oct 12, 2016 | Mahmoud Solh
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Since war broke out in Syria, 11 million people have fled their homes. In 2012, the turmoil reached the doorstep of ICARDA Agricultural Research Station in Tel Hadya near Aleppo in Syria. Almost 40 years of research on crops, livestock, soil and water, that was supporting sustainable agriculture development projects in over 40 countries, had come into the direct line of fire. A unique GeneBank of ancient and crop wild relative genetic material was in danger of being lost forever if it was not duplicated safely outside Syria.

Rebuilding the ICARDA drylands plant genetic resources GeneBank was an especially complex challenge. All the genetic resources in our GeneBank in Tel Hadya were safely duplicated in the Svalbard Seed Vault in Norway (80 percent) and in other countries including Lebanon and Morocco. This was the first ever withdrawal of seeds from the Vault. The base collection remains in Aleppo, but as access is difficult, we needed to reconstruct the active and base collections in new genebank facilities, to make it rapidly available to crop breeders worldwide.