The deposit of new seeds from the Ghana genebank is an important step towards ensuring the long-term protection of the country’s major food crops.

Ghana has joined 15 other institutions, including one other first-time depositor – the Bonn University Botanic Gardens (Germany) – in safeguarding duplicates of their seed collections inside the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

The Seed Vault safeguards duplicates of 1,214,827 seed samples originating from almost every country in the world, with room for millions more. Its purpose is to backup genebank collections to secure the foundation of our future food supply. 

The Ghanaian deposit comes from the Plant Genetic Resources Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR-PGRRI). It includes key crops essential for the country's food security, health, and culinary culture. It also holds maize, rice, aubergine, and cowpea varieties.

Source: Government.no

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