Priceless Ancient Seed Bank Saved from Destruction in Syria

An amazing collection of ancient seeds, some up to 10,000 years old, was saved from harm and destruction in Syria after a group of scientists in Aleppo managed to smuggle their valuable stockpile out of the country.  Syria is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, and some of the seed varieties date back to the dawn of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent.

Researchers Smuggled an Astonishing 140,000 Seed Packets Out of Syria

Since 2012, scientists from The International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) have been working to protect their seed bank. When civil war erupted in Syria, Ahmed Amri, the director of genetic resources at ICARDA, immediately thought about the thousands of packets of seeds sitting in cold storage 19 miles south of Aleppo. ICARDA is one of the eleven international genebanks charged with protecting the world’s most vital crops and their wild relatives. Each center has a specialty, and this one focuses on preserving and protecting crops from dry regions, mostly in developing countries.

These packets included ancient varieties of wheat and durum dating back nearly to the dawn of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent, which evolved as early as 8,000 BC, and one of the world’s largest collections of lentil, barley, and faba bean varieties that for many years have been feeding hundreds of millions of people around the world. If these seeds had been destroyed, our planet would have lost an extremely valuable genetic resource developed over hundreds, or in some cases thousands, of years.