Every June 5th, World Environment Day invites us to evaluate the scientific strategies aimed at its conservation. With regard to the preservation of biodiversity, seed banks play a key role in food security and agriculture. In the contemporary scenario of global climate crisis, germplasm banks have ceased to be mere botanical repositories and have become strategic security infrastructures; they act as the last line of biological defense, housing the genetic material (seeds, spores, tissues, or pollen) of plant communities from all over the world and essential crops capable of restoring life and food sovereignty to the planet.
On a global scale, the prime example of this protection network is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, located on the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen (Norway). Recently awarded with the 2026 Princess of Asturias Award for International Cooperation, the Seed Bank stores duplicates (backups) of seed samples from the world’s crop collections as a safeguard against catastrophic losses, ensuring that countries of origin retain ownership of their genetic material. This vault acts as a fortress, being excavated 120 meters underground and 130 meters above sea level, characteristics that guarantee the stability of the conditions necessary to preserve the material, even in the face of potential polar ice melt. Optimal seed preservation requires a temperature of -18°C; the permafrost and the thick layer of rock in the area where the vault is built naturally ensure (without the need for electricity) that the samples remain frozen.
The global strategy for conserving plant genetic material is replicated regionally in Spain through networks of associated research centers. One example is the Germplasm Bank of the Global Change Research Institute at Rey Juan Carlos University (IICG-URJC), directed since 2008 by IICG-URJC researcher José María Iriondo Alegría. This bank currently safeguards 560 species using ex situ conservation methodologies. To delve deeper into the importance of these conservation infrastructures and their interaction, we recommend listening to the recent interview with Alfredo García Fernández, also a researcher at IICG-URJC, on the program “A golpe de bit” on Radio Nacional de España (RNE), where he highlighted the contribution of Spanish science to the global network, which includes the transfer of nearly 470 agricultural varieties and native wild plants to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, among them different varieties of olive trees.
The Germplasm Bank of the IICG-URJC conserves and manages two large biological collections: High Mountain (highly vulnerable to global warming) and Semi-arid (adapted to severe water stress conditions), preserving the genetic resilience of native flora against environmental stressors such as heat, salinity, and extreme cold.
The strategic value of the global germplasm network was tested by the collapse of the Aleppo regional seed bank due to the Syrian civil war, where irreplaceable plant genetic collections from the Middle East were lost. Thanks to duplicates stored in the Svalbard Arctic Vault, in 2015 researchers from the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) were able to carry out the first official seed withdrawal in history; samples of wheat, barley, lentils, and chickpeas were replicated in Lebanon and Morocco, successfully rebuilding the lost bank, returning resources to local farmers, and thus saving a critical link in food security.
On the other hand, germplasm banks cope with disasters and the impact of intensive agribusiness; they combat three major ecological risks: cross-contamination of pure, traditional varieties, the introduction of hybrid or sterile seeds that disrupt agricultural cycles, and the displacement of local crops naturally adapted to pests and droughts.
For all these reasons, we commemorate World Environment Day by highlighting the importance of germplasm banks; evidence that research centers like the IICG-URJC contribute to the preservation and study of plant tissues and safeguard the evolutionary map and ecological memory of the Earth as an essential safeguard for trying to bequeath a habitable world to future generations.