The collector and his mission
The world's first seed bank began with botanist Nikolai Vavilov's mission to end famine. Established in 1921 in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), the institute was the culmination of Vavilov's theory on the "centers of origin" of cultivated plants. He hypothesized that the regions with the greatest genetic diversity of a particular crop were also its point of domestication. This idea directed his collection efforts.
Vavilov and his colleagues undertook more than 100 expeditions to 64 countries across five continents. They gathered hundreds of thousands of seed samples, from wheat and barley in the Fertile Crescent to potatoes in South America. By the 1930s, his collection was the largest in the world, containing over 250,000 unique plant samples, including 6,000 varieties of potato and over 1,000 types of strawberries. Vavilov's work was about preservation; it is a genetic library for breeding new crop varieties resilient to disease and climate challenges. His work was tragically cut short when he was arrested by Stalin's regime in 1940. He died of starvation in a prison in 1943.
The 872-day siege
During World War II, the German army laid siege to Leningrad for 872 days, cutting off all food supplies. As hundreds of thousands in the city starved, a small group of scientists barricaded themselves inside the Vavilov Institute. Their purpose was to protect the massive collection of edible seeds, tubers, and grains from the starving populace, rats, and German bombs.
The scientists knew that the collection—containing tons of rice, wheat, corn, beans, and potatoes—was important to rebuilding global agriculture after the war. They boxed up the seeds, moved them to the basement, and took turns on 24-hour guard duty. No one was allowed in the collection rooms alone, for fear that the temptation to eat the seeds would be too great. As the brutal siege wore on, the scientists began to succumb to hunger. At least nine of the botanists starved to death while surrounded by food. Peanut specialist Alexander Stchukin died at his desk; rice expert Dmitri Ivanov perished while guarding thousands of packets of rice. Their sacrifice ensured the seed collection survived the war intact.