On Call for Catastrophe, Seeds Lie in Arctic Deep-Freeze

Deep inside an Arctic mountain, on this island where only lowly lichens thrive, the seeds of wheat, cabbage and 4,000 other plants lie frozen and dormant, on call for catastrophe.

If nuclear war devastates and mutates plant life on the Earth’s surface, the underground Nordic Gene Bank could help replenish the world with the undamaged germ plasm of crucial food crops.

The natural deep freeze, 900 feet inside a working coal mine, was established three years ago by foresighted Scandinavian agricultural scientists. It is a unique far-northern link in a worldwide system of 30 gene banks that store seeds for use in plant experiments today and as a genetic backup for possible disasters tomorrow.

Spitsbergen, a barren Norwegian island 800 miles from the North Pole, was chosen because it offered natural cold storage--a constant 25 to 27 degrees Fahrenheit in the mine shafts. And there is no worry of power failures, the nightmare of scientists who work with refrigeration units at the main Nordic Gene Bank, at the Agricultural University of Sweden.

Radiation Protection

Mine No. 3 of the Great Norwegian Spitsbergen Coal Co. offered another advantage as well.

“Having it located in a coal mine with 60 meters (195 feet) of bedrock above provides very good protection against nuclear radiation,” said Kjell Qvist, director of the Nordic Gene Bank, which is supported by the governments of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.

Spitsbergen’s remoteness should further protect the site during any global nuclear war.

The Arctic gene-storage facility is intended as a duplicate to the more conventional--and vulnerable--Nordic Gene Bank in Alnarp, Sweden, which now stores seeds for 13,000 varieties, concentrating on plants of the Nordic lands.

3,500 Population

Two or three times a year, the Alnarp specialists freeze-dry batches of seed samples, seal them in glass vials and fly them 1,600 miles north to Spitsbergen, a glacier-bound island whose coal mines support a population of 3,500.

At the No. 3 mine shaft, 600 feet up a mountainside overlooking broad Ice Fiord, the 20-inch-long wooden boxes holding the vials are transported down to the storage site, a transverse tunnel emptied of coal long ago and now named Frey Hall, after an ancient Viking god of fertility.

The boxes are then locked away in a 13-foot-long metal shipping container, sitting behind two heavy wooden doors.

“The humidity in here can be 90%, so the steel container is specially treated against rust,” mine supervisor Atle Brekken said as he guided a reporter into the frost-coated and pitch-black hall, illuminated only by miners’ helmet lights.

Moisture Protection

The glass vials protect the seeds themselves against the moisture.

Each vial holds 500 to 1,000 seeds of one plant variety. They include barley, corn, hay grasses, cucumber, beet, clover, carrot and other common grains, grasses and vegetables.

Scientists are not sure precisely how long the frozen seeds will remain viable, but they are confident that they will last scores of years.

Gene banks have been established internationally to provide material for experiments to strengthen plants against disease, pests and harsh climate.

Disease a Danger

If, for example, a high-yielding species of grain falls victim to a disease, geneticists can return to the original, relatively primitive local species to start work on a new hybrid. Gene banks also store newly discovered wild varieties, often hardier than commonly planted types.

The U.S. National Seed Storage Laboratory in Fort Collins, Colo., maintains more than 200,000 plant varieties in cold-storage rooms. Scientists there and elsewhere have expressed concern, however, about the vulnerability of their facilities.

“There has been interest expressed in our Spitsbergen technique by people both in the East and the West,” said Qvist, interviewed by telephone from Sweden.

Qvist and his colleagues view their gene banks in the context of centuries. They have just launched a 100-year experiment, during which the moisture content and other characteristics of stored seeds will be checked every five years to compare survivability in Spitsbergen and in the colder environment of the Alnarp bank, where refrigeration keeps temperatures at about zero Fahrenheit.