Hawtin and Fowler participated in the establishment of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway.
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Hawtin and Fowler participated in the establishment of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway.
Scientists Jeffrey Hawtin and Cary Fowler, who won the prestigious World Food Prize on Thursday for their work to save World Heritage seeds, are on a mission.
Their mission is to protect as many seeds as possible so that one day the world can benefit from their genetic characteristics. All of their activities are carried out in the name of protecting global food security.
Hawtin and Fowler helped establish a global glacier-cut seed reserve on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard in the Arctic. Currently, he has 1.25 million samples stored there for preservation in cold regions.
For this work, they have been selected as the 2024 recipients of the World Food Prize, which recognizes individuals who have improved the quality, quantity and availability of food around the world.
Hawtin, 75, a British-Canadian agronomist, told AFP that the goal has always been to save as many seeds as possible.
“What's really changed a little bit since it opened in 2008 is the materials that are used in it,” he says.
Although the reserve primarily collected seeds from “cultivated” plants such as wheat and barley, it now hosts more wild species that are more or less related to cultivated plants.
The latter primarily “have genes that are particularly interesting when it comes to climate change,” he said.
countless experiments
Plant domestication is “the result of countless experiments over thousands of years,” said Fowler, 74, an American seed expert and special envoy for global food security.
It would be “arrogant” to think that current genetic engineering tools, even the most sophisticated, can reproduce those experiments, he added.
It would be a “more expensive way to access the diversity already contained in seeds in seed banks.”
Hawtin said that gene editing has a big role to play, but “the question is what to edit.''
“There are tens of thousands of genes, if not more, that somehow influence a plant's response to climate change. It could be heat, cold, drought, flooding, or other climate change. ” he said. He said.
He said it was questionable whether even artificial intelligence could enable the “complete level of understanding” required for such an approach.
Still, he predicts the rise of digital seed banks, where more and more information detailing a plant's genetic characteristics will be stored.
saved in syria
Both men began their careers in the 1970s.
At that time, the goal was not yet 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 concerns at the time were about filling people's bellies,” Fowler said.
To achieve this, experts at the time recommended concentrating on the highest-yielding seeds and using large amounts of fertilizers and pesticides.
Since then, they have understood the importance of developing more durable farming systems and expanding the range of crops grown, Fowler said.
As Special Envoy for Global Food Security, he promotes the use of traditional crops in Africa. Often ignored in research programs that prioritize corn, wheat, and rice, these may be more nutritious and better adapted to the environment.
Hawtin began his career in the Middle East, meeting with farmers in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Lebanon and Jordan, collecting vegetable seeds and cross-referencing them.
I didn't want to just throw it away, so I started keeping it.
Seed banks are “caught in the middle”
Thirty years later, the Syrian civil war forces the Aleppo seed bank where the agronomist once worked to urgently “evacuate” samples.
Many of them went to seed banks in Svalbard.
Some, including vegetable seeds, collected by Hawtin and his team have already been recovered from the reserve to join collections in Morocco and Lebanon.
“Two weeks ago, I was in Morocco and saw some of that material being planted in Moroccan fields and being tested for drought tolerance,” Hawtin said.
The fact that Earth's reserves were depleted so quickly has left scientists with a bittersweet feeling.
“It's like car insurance. You never want to be in a situation where you have to use your insurance,” Fowler said.
“Unfortunately, I think we will continue to see more conflicts and natural disasters happening around the world, where seed banks unfortunately find themselves caught in the middle,” he added.
The World Food Prize, worth $500,000, was established in 1986 by Dr. Norman E. Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his achievements in global agriculture.
It is held every year in Iowa, USA.
