In a time when climate change, war, and industrial farming are reshaping our food systems, gene banks might just be one of the most important institutions you’ve never heard of. These hidden treasure troves store the seeds of our past – and potentially, the future of our food.
So what exactly is a gene bank?
Imagine a library, but instead of books, it holds seeds: rice, wheat, cassava, beans, and countless other crop varieties – some ancient, some forgotten, some never commercialised but brimming with potential. Each seed represents a unique set of genes, traits that could help future crops resist drought, fight off pests, or thrive in changing climates.
Gene banks exist all over the world, in high-tech labs in Colombia and Kenya, in Arctic vaults deep inside the mountains of Svalbard, and in community seed huts in rural Ethiopia. Their mission is simple but vital: to preserve the biodiversity of our crops so that plant breeders and farmers can keep adapting to an unpredictable world.
Why Now?
In the past century, modern agriculture has increasingly favoured uniformity. Vast fields of identical crops may look efficient, but they’re biologically vulnerable. If a disease or pest evolves to target one crop variety, entire harvests can be wiped out – and in a warming world, that risk is rising.
Meanwhile, traditional crops and landraces (genetically diverse varieties cultivated over centuries by farmers) are vanishing. Once they’re gone, their unique traits are lost forever.
Gene banks help counter this. By preserving both modern and ancient varieties, they offer a genetic toolkit for future-proofing agriculture. Need a wheat variety that matures faster to escape a drought? Or a bean that thrives in poor soils? A solution might already exist stored, labelled, and waiting to be rediscovered.
More Than Just Storage
Gene banks are more than just freezers for seeds. They’re active research hubs, cultural archives, and most importantly – safety nets. In Kenya, farmers work with scientists to test varieties from the national gene bank and select the ones best suited to local conditions. In Colombia, researchers are exploring cassava and beans for traits that could address both malnutrition and climate resilience. In Norwich, UK, one of the world’s most important wheat collections is helping plant scientists breed crops that will feed us for generations.
And if disaster strikes, from war to flood to heatwave, these banks can provide the genetic material to restore what’s been lost.
A Future Worth Investing In
Yet gene banks, for all their importance, often struggle for funding. Maintaining seed viability, cataloguing genetic traits, and collaborating with breeders all require skilled people, long-term vision, and stable budgets. That’s why organisations like the Crop Trust exist, to help secure the future of global seed collections before they’re put at risk.
Because make no mistake: the next great crop breakthrough won’t just come from a lab! It will come from a seed, stored somewhere by someone who had the foresight to protect it.
Want to learn more about the people behind this movement?
The Super-Seeders is the upcoming book exploring the human stories at the heart of the plant genetic revolution – from seed banks to field trials, and from forgotten histories to future breakthroughs.