The Svalbard Global Seed Vault carried out its first deposit of the year on 25 February 2025.
For the first time, seed samples from two new countries, Guatemala and Niger, were deposited.
In addition, the Vault received its first-ever deposit of olive seeds. In total, 7,864 seed samples from ten depositors arrived at the Arctic facility for long-term safeguarding.
With this 69th deposit, the total number of seed samples secured in the Seed Vault has reached 1,386,102. The facility is located in permafrost deep inside a mountain on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen. It is operated by the Norwegian Government, the Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen) and the Crop Trust.
Video of the deposit on 25 February 2026
The latest deposit brought together a mix of national genebanks, international research centres and community-linked collections. The seeds newly secured include:
- Cereals and legumes that serve as staple foods for millions of people across Africa
- Vegetable crops central to diets and nutrition worldwide
- Traditional crops and an ancestor of maize from local Indigenous farmers in Guatemala
- Olives, a crop whose fruit and oil hold global nutritional, gastronomic, cultural and economic importance
Photo credit: Crop Trust
The Olive Genebank of the University of Córdoba, part of the International Olive Council’s network of genebanks, brought olive seeds to Svalbard for the first time. The deposit included wild olive seeds from Spain as well as seeds representing the 50 most important cultivated olive varieties worldwide. Safeguarding these seeds is a key outcome of the European research project GEN4OLIVE, led by the University of Córdoba.
Guatemala’s national genebank, managed by the Instituto de Ciencia y Tecnología Agrícolas (ICTA), deposited 950 samples from ten species. Some of these seeds originate from traditional maize and bean varieties preserved and further developed by the local farmers’ organisation ASOCUCH.
Marcel Schütz, PolarJournal