Scientists win the World Food Prize for their work on the Global Seed Vault

Scientists Geoffrey Hawtin and Cary Fowler, who received the prestigious World Food Prize on Thursday for “their work to preserve the world’s seed heritage,” are on a mission.

Their calling is to protect as many seeds as possible so that the world can one day benefit from their genetic traits. Their work is entirely in the name of protecting global food security.

Hawtin and Fowler helped establish a global reserve of seeds dug from a glacier on the Norwegian archipelago of Spitsbergen in the Arctic, where 1.25 million samples are now stored for cold storage.

It was for this work that they were named 2024 winners of the World Food Prize, which is awarded to individuals who have increased the quality, quantity or availability of food worldwide.

The aim is always to preserve as many agricultural seeds as possible, 75-year-old British-Canadian agronomist Hawtin told AFP.

“What’s actually changed a little bit since it opened in 2008 is the material that goes into it,” he said.

After mainly collecting seeds from “domesticated” plants such as wheat and barley, the reserve now welcomes more wild species that are more or less related to cultivated plants.

The latter “particularly have genes that are particularly interesting in climate change,” he said.

Countless experiments

Plant domestication is “the result of thousands of years and countless experiments,” says Fowler, a 74-year-old American seed specialist and the US special envoy for global food security.

It would be “arrogant” to think that current genetic engineering tools, even the most advanced, could reproduce these experiments, he added.

That would be “a more expensive way to get the diversity we already have in the seeds into the seed banks.”

Hawtin said that while gene editing plays a big role, the “problem is what to edit.”

“There are tens of thousands, if not more, of genes that somehow influence the plant’s response to just climate change, which could be heat, which could be cold, which could be drought, which could be flooding,” he says. said.

He said he doubted even artificial intelligence would enable “the full level of understanding” needed for such an approach.

Nevertheless, he predicts the rise of digital seed banks where more and more information about the genetic characteristics of plants will be stored.

Stored in Syria

Both men started their careers in the 1970s.

The goal at that time was not to adapt to climate change, but to produce as much wheat, corn and rice as possible.

“There were famines in Ethiopia and India and most of the concern at the time was filling people’s stomachs,” Fowler said.

To achieve this, experts at the time recommended focusing on seeds with the highest yields and making massive use of fertilizers and pesticides.

Since then, they have understood the importance of developing more sustainable agricultural systems and increasing the range of crops grown, Fowler said.

As Special Envoy for Global Food Security, he promotes the use of traditional crops in Africa. Often neglected by research programs in favor of corn, wheat and rice, they are potentially more nutritious and better adapted to the environment.

Hawtin began his career in the Middle East, meeting and then connecting farmers and collecting vegetable seeds in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Lebanon and Jordan.

Not wanting to just throw them away, he started keeping them.

Seed banks ‘in the middle’

Three decades later, the war in Syria forced the seed bank in Aleppo, where the agronomist had once worked, to urgently ‘evacuate’ its samples.

Many of them went to the Spitsbergen seed bank.

Some, including vegetable seeds collected by Hawtin and his team, have already been taken from the reserve to participate in the collections in Morocco and Lebanon.

“Two weeks ago I was in Morocco and I saw some of that material being planted in the fields in Morocco and being tested for drought resistance,” Hawtin said.

The fact that the global reserve was used up so quickly leaves scientists with a tinge of bitterness.

“It’s like car insurance. You never want to be in a situation where you have to use it,” Fowler said.

“I’m sorry to say it, but I think there will be more situations of conflict and natural disasters around the world, with seed banks unfortunately being caught in the middle,” he added.

The World Food Prize, worth $500,000, was established in 1986 by Dr. Norman E. Borlaug, who received the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in global agriculture.

It is presented every year in Iowa, the United States.