Join us exploring our food future

Flowers of Saxifraga oppositifolia photographed in June with snow between the flowers

Learning while we can from resilient arctic plants

Svalbard’s plants are true survivors. They have endured the Arctic for millennia, adapting to some of the harshest conditions on Earth: short summers, frozen ground, and extremes of cold, wind and drought.

But the Arctic is warming faster than almost anywhere on Earth, and our window to understand them is closing. Some species may disappear before we fully understand them and the solutions they hold.

Help us learn from them while we still can.

Bildet er tatt under UMB studenters feltarbeid på Svalbard.
2 Studenter fra HIO, hvorav fotografen er en av dem, var med å dokumentere arbeidet og forskningen som en del av deres studium i media.

A complete record of how arctic plants survive

Svalbard is home to a surprising range of vascular plants, many of them rare and some found nowhere else on Earth. Yet we still know very little about their genetic makeup. We are working to fill that gap.

Its all in the genome
A genome is the complete set of instructions a plant carries: everything it needs to grow, flower and survive in its natural environment. Shaped over millennia, the genomes of these Arctic species hold the secrets to their survival.
By mapping them, we potentially unlock breakthroughs on how future crops can withstand the changing climate. We sequence each genome in full to capture how these species endure.

The Seed Vault in the Arctic province of Norway, Svalbard.

A sequenced genome lasts forever, open to science everywhere

Svalbard is already home to the Global Seed Vault, where crop seeds are kept safe for the future. Our project adds a second kind of safekeeping: we publish each genome openly, preserving the knowledge held within these species, even if the plants themselves are lost.

A foundation for future discoveries
While a seed can age or fail to sprout, a sequenced genome cannot be lost. Once we read a plant's genome, it becomes a permanent record, freely available to any researcher, anywhere. Scientists decades from now can return to these sequences and ask questions we have not yet imagined. That is the gift: not one discovery, but a foundation others keep building on.

Nature-based solutions for tomorrow's food

Grasses are arguably humanity's biggest provider, giving us grains, bread and cereals. Siri Fjellheim and her team see real opportunity in their hardiest wild relatives, and believe a breakthrough is within reach.

Siri's team works on two fronts: helping crops to tolerate cold and drought, and understanding why some grasses live a single season while others return for many. The answers lie in the plants' genes, and reading them is the first step toward hardier food crops.

A future eureka moment for bread and cereals

Today, every major cereal crop we depend on are replanted every single year. Imagine instead a perennial cereal: one planting with repeated harvests, less ploughing, less erosion and fewer tractors in the field.