Cary Fowler and Geoffrey Hawtin have been named the 2024 World Food Prize Laureates for their work in establishing the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
The awardees “have done critical work to advance global crop biodiversity and conserve over 6,000 varieties of crops and culturally important plants which has had a direct impact in addressing hunger around the world,” says Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Known as the doomsday vault, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway is home to more than 1 million seed samples, with space for 4.5 million varieties. It was established in 2008 to protect global food security and biodiversity in the face of pandemics, natural disasters, and other catastrophes.
In 2004, Fowler, then working with the CGIAR, conducted a study to determine the best location for seed storage. “While creating a global seed vault might seem logical now, people told me at the time that the idea was crazy,” he says. Fowler later served as first Chair of the Vault’s International Advisory Council.
Hawtin, meanwhile, served as a member of the original study team to understand the viability of the Seed Vault and determined its technical specifications. He also created the Crop Trust in 2004, which helps to finance the Seed Vault today.
“Drs. Hawtin and Fowler have been instrumental in ensuring that all these genebanks, the treasure troves of plant genetic resources, have an ultimate backup in the Seed Vault on Svalbard, and have also paved the way for the diversity of crops in these genebanks to be utilized by researchers, plant breeders and farmers,” says Stefan Schmitz, Executive Director of the Crop Trust.
Fowler wants to see the recognition of the Seed Vault encourage more collections, particularly indigenous crops that offer even more diversity and material for plant breeding.
“I’m hoping the World Food Prize will inspire investments in this kind of transformational R&D which is going to be necessary for food and nutrition security for 10 billion people by 2050,” says Fowler.
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Photo courtesy of Frode Ramone, Wikimedia Commons
