Safeguarding a Safeguard: Assessing the Status of Global Ex-Situ Crop Conservation and the Svalbard Global Seed Vault’s Role in its Protection

Abstract: The Svalbard Seed Vault serves as a backup against accidental loss of genetic crop diversity within the existing global conservation system. Addressing this objective, this thesis repeats the 2013 assessment of the Seed Vault’s completeness relative to the global conservation system as performed by Westengen et al (2013, 1). It is shown that gaps have continued to exist in Svalbard’s collection. Second, this thesis goes beyond the 2013 analysis, seeking to assess whether reductions in accession quality amongst under-resourced genebanks has impacted their ability to safeguard their accessions in the Seed Vault. By using accession-level data from Genesys PGR and the NordGen Seed Portal, a regression analysis is performed, showing that the average Passport Data Completeness Index (PDCI) of a holding institute is positively correlated with the percentage of its suitable accessions duplicated in Svalbard. This suggests that the genebanks whose collections are most likely at risk to genetic erosion are also likely to be less capable of safeguarding their accessions in Svalbard.