On Feb. 6, 2008, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault was opened on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen near Longyearbyen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago. Conservationist Cary Fowler, in association with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, started the vault to preserve a wide variety of plant seeds that are duplicate samples, or “spare” copies, of seeds held in gene banks worldwide.

The mission of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is to insure against the loss of seeds in genebanks located throughout the world during large-scale regional or global crises. The seed vault is managed through a tripartite agreement between the Norwegian government, the Global Crop Diversity Trust and the Nordic Genetic Resource Center.