The vault where the seeds are stored

New Delhi, May 16: Inside a stone and wood-panelled building on a frozen mountain top in Ladakh, on the road from Leh to Pangong lake, seeds of vegetables and other plants sealed in moisture-proof packets sit on steel racks.

Sometimes, during the hottest days of the year in May and June, the temperatures climb to about 5°C above zero. But for more than 10 months of the year, the cold remains below -18°C — just right for long-term storage of seeds.

The structure at Chang-La, a three-hour drive from Leh, built by Indian defence researchers is the world’s second doomsday vault after the Svalbard Global Seed Vault set up by Norway more than two years ago on an Arctic island.

Both vaults are storing seeds for the future, a reserve against natural or manmade catastrophes that might wipe out key crops. The Chang-La vault has acquired over 5,000 seed samples — apricots, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, radish, tomatoes, barley and wheat, among others. Some seeds will yield an anti-malarial compound, others are sources of a natural anti-cancer chemical.

“This is Noah’s Ark type of activity,” said William Selvamurthy, a senior scientist who heads the life sciences division at India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation which has funded the Rs 2 crore Chang-La seed vault.

The deposits in the seed vaults could be used to replant crops lost through either natural or manmade disasters on a regional or global scale. “Droughts, floods, or climate change, or even pests may threaten crops,” Selvamurthy said.

The idea for a high altitude seed vault in Ladakh emerged after a mysterious locust invasion in Ladakh nearly five years ago.

“It was the first major infestation of locusts in Ladakh and it hurt the barley crop here badly,” said Shashi Bala Singh, director of the Defence Institute of High Altitude Research, Leh, a research centre trying to grow fresh vegetables in Ladakh.

Although the Indian Council of Agricultural Research maintains a national plant gene repository in New Delhi, it is “enormously expensive” to store seeds in hot humid conditions, Selvamurthy said.

Seeds need to be preserved at below -18°C in low humidity conditions for long term storage. At Chang-La, the temperature needs to be artificially brought down to -18°C only during the summer — the end of May and early June.

“We’re currently focused on high-yielding plant varieties as well as traditional crops grown in Ladakh,” Singh said. But over time, she said, the seed vault is expected to receive samples from other agricultural institutions in India.

The seed deposits are still tiny compared to the Svalbard vault which has now acquired over 525,000 samples — rice from India and Malaysia and wheat from Lebanon and South Africa, among others.