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HOW TO: Save Seeds & Start Your Own Seed Bank - Milkwood - Permaculture Living

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Seedsavers Network – manuals, seeds, blogs, local networks – so good!

Seed Freaks – for their fabulous Bean poster (and their everything else) – AU

Navdanya – community of over 6 million farmer families, has established 111 Community Seed Banks in 17 States across India, facts about seeds, living soils, foods, poisons on crops, women-led economies

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds – gorgeous rare seeds – US

Pavlovsk Experimental Station – Russian seed bank

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What’s the Difference? Open-Pollinated, Heirloom & Hybrid Seeds, Seed Savers Exchange – first thing to be aware of when seed saving

Castlemaine Seed Library – great example of a public seed library

Controlling Cross Pollination – How To Stop Cross Pollination, Heather Rhoades, Gardening Know How – learn types of pollination, and how to prevent them crossing

How to Store Your Seeds, The Seed Collection – fundamentals of storage

Seed Lending Library: How To Start A Seed Library, Mary H Dyer, Gardening Know How – easy steps to a communal seed library

The Men who Starved to Death to Save the World’s Seeds, Rakesh Krishnan Simha, Russia Beyond – incredible story

Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Safeguarding Seeds for the Future and humanity

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Seed Savers Handbook, Michel and Jude Fanton (Seed Savers’ Network, 2000) – comprehensive guide to seed saving and seed varieties

Milkwood: Real Skills for Down-to-Earth Living, Kirsten Bradley and Nick Ritar – Chapter 1: The Tomato

The Seed Garden : the art and practice of seed saving, Micaela Colley & Jared Zystro

Manual of Seed Saving, Andrea Heistinger & Ian Miller – saving vegetable, herb and fruit seeds

Seed Libraries: And Other Means of Keeping Seeds in the Hands of the People, Cindy Conner

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- Industry has emphasised hybrid varieties whose seeds cannot be saved,  making us reliant on seed companies
- Today just 5 multinational companies control over 75% of the worlds vegetable seed market

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To preserve Biodiversity
- When plant varieties become extinct, genetic diversity is lost and so are the uniques genes that make up their shape colour, hardiness and delicious flavour .

To develop new varieties
- Save the seeds of the plants that have performed best in your soil and climate, by doing this you gradually make better varieties suited to your conditions.

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DO save this
- Open Pollinated Seed
- Heirloom Seed

DO NOT save this
- Hybrid Seeds

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The Seed Vault safeguards duplicates of 1,301,397 seed samples from almost every country globally, with room for millions more. Its purpose is to back up genebank collections to secure the foundation of our future food supply.

Can't travel to the Arctic to see the Seed Vault? No worries. You can now 'visit' the Seed Vault virtually via Svalbard Global Seed Vault Virtual Tour.
Take a virtual tour of the Seed Vault

Why do we need a global seed vault?

Worldwide, more than 1,700 genebanks hold collections of food crops for safekeeping, yet many of these are vulnerable, exposed not only to natural catastrophes and war, but also to avoidable disasters, such as lack of funding or poor management. Something as mundane as a poorly functioning freezer can ruin an entire collection. And the loss of a crop variety is as irreversible as the extinction of a dinosaur, animal or any form of life. The Seed Vault stores duplicates (backups) of seed samples from the world's crop collections as a safeguard against such catastrophic loss.
Why crop diversity matters

How does it work?

The Seed Vault is the ultimate insurance policy for the world's food supply, securing millions of seeds representing every important crop variety available in the world today and offering options for future generations to overcome the challenges of climate change and population growth.

A temperature of −18°C is required for optimal storage of the seeds. Permafrost and thick rock ensure that the seed samples will remain frozen even without power. The seeds are sealed in custom-made three-ply foil packages, which are sealed inside boxes and stored on shelves inside the Seed Vault. The low temperature and moisture levels inside the Seed Vault ensure low metabolic activity, keeping the seeds viable for long periods of time.
Find out what other projects the Crop Trust is involved in

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is owned by Norway and managed in partnership between the Norwegian Ministry of Agriculture and Food, the regional genebank NordGen and the Crop Trust.
Visit the Seed Vault's homepage

Why Svalbard?

The Seed Vault is in an ideal location for long-term seed storage for several reasons.

The storage

The Seed Vault has the capacity to store 4.5 million varieties of crops. Each packet of seeds consists of an average of 500 seeds, so a maximum of 2.5 billion seeds may be stored in the Seed Vault.

As of May 2024, the Seed Vault holds more than 1.3 million seed varieties originating from almost every country in the world. These range from unique varieties of major African and Asian food staples such as maize, rice, wheat, cowpea and sorghum to European and South American varieties of eggplant, lettuce, barley and potato. The Seed Vault already holds the most diverse collection of food crop seeds in the world.

The Seed Vault's objective is to safeguard as much of the world's unique crop genetic material as possible while also avoiding unnecessary duplication. It will take some years to assemble because some genebanks need to multiply the stock of seed first, and other seeds need to be regenerated before they can be shipped to Svalbard.

For a complete overview of the samples stored in the Seed Vault,
Visit NordGen's public online database

4.5M

Variety capacity

1,301,397

Samples in the Seed Vault

-18ºC

Temperature required

History

2023

The Seed Vault marked its 15th anniversary in February 2023 and received nearly 20,000 seed samples from 20 genebank depositors, including collections from first-time depositors from Albania, Croatia, North Macedonia, and Benin. A new virtual tour was launched.

2021

Thanks to an update to the Seed Portal, newly deposited seeds could be placed in the same box as the previous year's deposit for the first time. This will save space for future shipments from the same depositors.

2020

The Cherokee Nation became the first Indigenous group from North America to deposit when it safeguarded the seeds of nine heirloom food crops that predate European colonization.

World leaders met at the Seed Vault in February for a Seed Summit to discuss "Genetic diversity for more resilient food systems". Meanwhile, the number of seed varieties stored in the Seed Vault surpassed one million out of a total capacity of 4.5 million.

Who can take the seeds out?

The seed boxes are stored under "black-box conditions," meaning the depositors are the only ones who can withdraw their own seeds. When seeds are deposited in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, their legal ownership is not transferred. This means that a depositor who chooses to store seeds in the Seed Vault is still the owner of the seeds and the only one who can withdraw them from the Seed Vault.
See where the Crop Trust is active around the world

What is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault?

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault provides insurance against both incremental and catastrophic loss of crop diversity held in traditional genebanks around the world. The Seed Vault offers long-term protection for one of the most important natural resources onearth.

What groups are involved in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault?

The Seed Vault is owned and administered by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food on behalf of the Kingdom of Norway and is established as a service to the world community. The Global Crop Diversity Trust provides support for the ongoing operations of the Seed Vault, as well as funding for the preparation and shipment of seeds from developing countries to the facility. The Nordic Genetic Resources Center (NordGen) operates the facility and maintains a public online databaseof samples stored in the seed vault. An International Advisory Council oversees the management and operations of the Seed Vault.

Why Svalbard?

Svalbard was chosen for several reasons. Its cold climate and permafrost make the area a perfect location for underground cold storage. The surrounding sandstone is stable for building and is low in radiation. In terms of security, Svalbard scores high marks compared to the locations of many other genebanks in the world. The infrastructure is good, with daily flights and a reliable source of energy from local coal supplies. The vault is located an extraordinary 120 meters (393.7 feet) into the rock, ensuring that the vault rooms will remain naturally frozen even in the event of failure of the mechanical cooling system and rising external air temperatures due to climate change.

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The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is our insurance against the loss of crop diversity and is the world's largest backup facility for seeds.

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It’s nothing new. We’ve been doing it for tens of thousands of years,
coming together at markets, town squares, in huts and in schools to swap seeds and share stories.

We always have excess seeds, and we love to share. Let us know what seeds you have too so you can help grow our library

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The Seed Library at UWCSEA EAST is just one of the many wonderful campus wide Environmental Initiatives (EI)  and is managed by the HS Propagation team. This valuable Service supports other various campus wide EI's, gardening within the curriculum and Service groups such as our PS, MS & HS Urban Gardeners.

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In Urban Gardening Propagation, we start new plants using seeds and vegetative cuttings for use by members of our school community. Alongside developing practical propagation skills, we contribute to the sustainability and promotion of biodiversity in the campus. An added advantage? The joy, relaxation and boosted moral of gardening on the green 6th floor rooftop garden and collaborating with others on a Thursday afternoon.

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In Urban Gardening Propagation, we start new plants using seeds and vegetative cuttings for use by members of our school community. Alongside developing practical propagation skills, we contribute to the sustainability and promotion of biodiversity in the campus. An added advantage?