Ancient Seeds: A Possible Key To Climate Adaptation

Short Wave

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🗓️ 24 February 2023

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

In the Bekaa Valley region of Lebanon, there is a giant walk-in fridge housing tens of thousands of seeds. They belong to the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA). Scientists from around the world use the seeds for research. ICARDA seeds have improved food security in several countries. They've transformed Ethiopian agriculture to use more drought-resistant crops. A new chickpea can be planted in winter. And now, NPR's Middle East correspondent Ruth Sherlock has found that some scientists are turning to the seed bank for answers to a hotter, drier planet. They're hoping ICARDA seeds will lead to breakthroughs in certain crops' resilience to the effects of climate change.

Read more of Ruth's reporting: https://n.pr/3IZB2Od

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:06.3	Hey, Shortwaveers, Emily Quang here and today on the show, we have a big story about something
0:12.4	very, very small. I'm talking about seeds. NPR's Ruth Sherlock first planted the idea with us.
0:20.0	Emily didn't. I said I did for you, Ruth Sherlock. I would. Hello.
0:23.7	Hello. So Ruth, you as a correspondent cover parts of the Middle East for NPR and a lot of your
0:32.2	reporting has focused on the ongoing Civil War in Syria. And I understand that is the context we
0:38.7	need for your story today. Exactly. So now the government has taken back much of the country,
0:43.8	but there is still fighting going on and more than half a million people have been killed, more than
0:48.8	half the country's population has been displaced by fighting. The conflict has destroyed
0:54.1	whole cities and life there has been just terrifying. Usually in the war, you have to be very
1:00.0	careful in moving here and there. Raffert Azor was working in Syria until the war made that
1:05.6	impossible. He's a researcher who breeds varieties of barley for an organization called and it's
1:11.6	a mouthful. The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas or Icada.
1:17.8	He's worked there for over 40 years. What can I tell you? I love everything. Since I plant the seed
1:26.8	till I harvest them. So I live with them all of this time. He told me he loves his job so much that
1:33.0	the hard disk on his computer is named Love Barley. Love that. Yeah. And yeah, the center where he
1:40.8	worked in Syria had a large seed bank. Emily, think of this place as a kind of time capsule.
1:47.6	It stores over 120,000 plants that are important to the human diet like wheat, legumes, barley.
1:54.8	In fact, some of the varieties there are now actually extinct in the outside world.
2:00.1	That is fascinating. Okay, so Raffert, he works for a seed bank. There are seed banks all over the
2:06.0	world, but this one at Carter, it just sounds really special. Yeah, it is really important, but you know,
2:12.2	the whole collection could have been lost over a decade ago in 2011. The Civil War began in Syria,
	...

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