KUCHING: The country has successfully deposited its heritage seeds and traditional crop varieties in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV), a secure storage facility located in the Arctic region of Longyearbyen Island, Norway.
Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI) said the facility, also known as the ‘doomsday’ vault, is situated within permafrost conditions and naturally maintains a temperature of less than 18 degrees Celsius (−18°C).
“The initiative is through the Biodiversity for Opportunities, Livelihoods and Development (BOLD) Project, and funded by CropTrust.
“MARDI identified genetic resources from its MyGeneBank collection and the National Rice Gene Bank, which have been collected since 1977 and to be stored as duplicates in Svalbard.
“These include traditional rice varieties, eggplants, and long beans,” it said in a Facebook post.
MARDI added a total of 725 plant accessions that were duplicated through two shipments in May and December last year.
On February 26, it said the SGSV doors were opened for the first time in 2025 to receive seed deposits from Malaysia and 20 other countries.
“This effort is a crucial step in ensuring the security and availability of genetic food resources in case the country faces disasters that could lead to the destruction of local genetic resource storage facilities,” it said.
According to CropTrust on its website, the Seed Vault safeguards duplicates of 1,301,397 seed samples from almost every country globally.
Its purpose is to back up gene bank collections to secure the foundation of future food supply.
At the Seed Vault, 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.
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, thereby a maximum of 2.5 billion seeds may be stored in the Seed Vault.
