The three partners behind the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, the Government of Norway, the Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen) and the Crop Trust, will direct the EUR 50,000 in prize money from the 2026 Princess of Asturias Award for International Cooperation to protecting vulnerable seed collections, Seed World Europe reported.
The money goes to the Emergency Reserve for Genebanks, which helps eligible genebanks prepare and deposit safety duplicates of important collections in Svalbard. Collections that might otherwise stay unprotected for lack of resources will come first.
"By directing the prize money toward collections that still need protection, we are extending that spirit of cooperation," said Nils Kristen Sandtrøen, Norway's Minister of Agriculture and Food.
The reserve is run jointly by the Crop Trust and the Secretariat of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. In Guatemala it paid to repair damaged cold storage and made possible the country's first Svalbard deposit in February 2026, more than 930 seed samples including maize and beans. In Ukraine it has helped relocate and secure the threatened national seed collection, including support for a new facility.
Opened in 2008 inside a mountain on Spitsbergen, the vault keeps backup copies of seed held in genebanks around the world, against disasters, conflict and equipment failure. "Crop diversity is a shared resource, and its loss anywhere diminishes the options available to farmers and breeders everywhere," said Kent Nnadozie, Secretary of the International Treaty.
For breeders working on varieties that can cope with climate change, pests and diseases, those stored seeds are the raw material.
Photo: Bjoertvedt / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Source: Seed World Europe
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