The seed vault's 70th deposit: 15,387 samples into the mountain
June's deposit from 11 genebanks took the Svalbard vault past 1.4 million samples. The February deposit added 7,864 more.
LONGYEARBYEN: The Svalbard Global Seed Vault received 15,387 seed samples from 11 genebanks in June, its 70th deposit occasion, taking the vault's total past 1,401,285 samples secured deep inside Platåberget mountain.
The February deposit, the first of 2026, added 7,864 samples from 10 depositors, bringing the total at that point to 1,386,102 samples. The two deposits together added more than 23,000 samples of the world's crop diversity to the backup collection this year.
The vault, opened in 2008, stores duplicates of seed collections from genebanks around the world as insurance against loss from conflict, natural disaster or mismanagement. Deposits are made a few times each year, and the vault now holds samples from nearly every country with a national genebank.
The milestone lands in a year when Svalbard's legal status is back under scrutiny. The seed vault's existence depends on the same treaty framework that governs the archipelago: Norwegian sovereignty, equal access for treaty parties, and the archipelago's special legal regime.
The vault's operator, the Norwegian government, deposits alongside international genebanks. The Crop Trust, which helps fund the vault's operations, has described the crossing of the 1.4 million mark as a milestone for global food security.
The next deposit window will be announced by the government later this year. For the genebanks that deposited in June, the mountain above Longyearbyen now holds the backup copy of collections their own countries cannot afford to lose.
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