{"id":89494,"date":"2024-08-12T12:38:12","date_gmt":"2024-08-12T12:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/council.science\/?p=89494"},"modified":"2024-08-13T07:09:47","modified_gmt":"2024-08-13T07:09:47","slug":"science-at-risk-a-race-against-time-to-protect-seeds-in-sudan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/council.science\/blog\/science-at-risk-a-race-against-time-to-protect-seeds-in-sudan\/","title":{"rendered":"Science at risk: a race against time to protect seeds and science in Sudan","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nearly 19,000 people have been killed<\/a> and almost 11 million displaced<\/a> in Sudan since civil war began in April 2023, according to data from the UN and the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the UN\u2019s agency for humanitarian affairs, 26 million people<\/a> in Sudan are in acute hunger. In August, famine was declared<\/a> in a refugee camp home to almost half a million people in western Sudan, while devastating floods<\/a> hit parts of eastern Sudan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ransacked seed bank<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

More than 100 universities have been damaged or destroyed, according Mohamed Hassan<\/a>, president of the Sudanese National Academy of Sciences, and the country\u2019s scientific and academic infrastructure has been largely shut down as scientists have been forced to flee<\/a>. The escalating violence is also threatening an irreplaceable scientific resource: the country\u2019s seed bank has been ransacked, putting at risk more than 15,000 samples of the region\u2019s plant life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carefully preserved in aluminum packets inside moisture-controlled deep freezers, the seeds held in the gene bank provide a backup of the region\u2019s unique and diverse native plants \u2013 among them the likely ancestor of the watermelon<\/a>, as well as varieties of sorghum, one of the most widely planted cereal crops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The seeds are also used as a starting point to develop improved crop varieties which are more nutritious, productive or can better withstand disease and drought \u2013 work that is more urgent than ever, in the face of the increasing effects of climate change. Stopping that work would also have implications beyond the region: Sudanese plants have been used to develop drought-resistant sorghum which is used as far away as North America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the area around the gene bank now occupied by militia, scientists are racing to find a way to rescue and preserve the collection before it is destroyed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really a disaster,\u201d says Mohammed Elsafy, a Sudanese plant biologist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences who has been pushing for international action<\/a> to save the collection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Power has been cut off to the facility housing the gene bank, and bags of seeds have been pulled out of freezers and scattered on the ground. Gathering the samples took years \u2013 and losing them now would force scientists to start over from scratch, Elsafy explains. Because the samples are used as base materials for plant breeding and research, each seed needs to be precisely documented. Rebuilding the collection would require not just collecting new seed samples but also multiplying them, logging their characteristics and filing them \u2013 redoing many years of precise work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier this year, Elsafy was able to contact the militia who control the area around the gene bank. They were open to the idea of moving the samples, and the Sudanese government agreed to help by moving the remains to a new facility in a safer part of the country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But talks broke down not long after, he says. A team from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization has since been able to visit the bank, but wasn\u2019t allowed to take any of the samples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unblocking the negotiations will take \u201cvery strong political involvement from a high level,\u201d says Elsafy, who is calling for governments and international organizations to leverage whatever influence they can to find a way to rescue the collection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Protecting scientific data<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The samples themselves are just one piece of the scientific infrastructure now threatened by the conflict, Elsafy adds. The gene bank is part of a large agricultural research complex<\/a>; it\u2019s unclear how much of the facility is intact, but bombing has been reported in the area, and Elsafy recently heard from people on the ground that the area is being used as a military camp and is too dangerous to approach. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of the things that really hurts is that my colleagues have worked very hard to establish a very advanced lab for molecular and other quality analysis, and we also train students in collaboration with our universities \u2026 When you think that all of the equipment, the lab we have been working so hard to establish, is gone \u2013 millions of dollars, just gone \u2013 \u201d he says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before the conflict worsened, Sudanese scientists had been depositing samples<\/a> at the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway, the \u2018doomsday\u2019 gene bank which holds more than 1.3 million samples<\/a> of seeds from around the world. Dug deep into the permafrost in a remote Arctic Ocean archipelago, the Svalbard vault is a last-resort backup for many of the world\u2019s about 1,700 gene banks \u2013 although it also faces the threat of climate change<\/a> and conflict<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Samples held in Svalbard were used to restart a collection<\/a> held in Aleppo, Syria, which had to be moved because of the Syrian civil war. But so far, only a fraction of the Sudanese collection has been backed up in Svalbard. The rest needs to be duplicated as soon as it can be moved to safety, Elsafy urges. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Expanding efforts to secure physical specimens and scientific data is one of several recommendations which the ISC\u2019s Centre for Science Futures recently highlighted<\/a> as one way to help science systems survive and recover after conflict. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The war on science<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In 2023, the Sudanese National Academy of Sciences called for solidarity<\/a> from scientists around the world to help their colleagues at risk. The ISC has also expressed deep concern<\/a> over the \u201cabhorrent impacts\u201d of the conflict on civilians and its catastrophic effect on the country\u2019s science system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The effects of more than a year of conflict in Sudan have been devastating: more than 100 of Sudan\u2019s universities have been destroyed or damaged<\/a> by the conflict, including every university in the state of Khartoum<\/a>. In just the first three months of war, more than half of the country\u2019s medical schools were attacked, with almost three-quarters looted and many others occupied and used as military bases, according to a recent study<\/a> published in Conflict and Health<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sudan\u2019s science system can be rebuilt, Elsafy adds \u2013 but first, the conflict has to end: \u201cWe will work hard to raise funds \u2013 and maybe we will have to start from scratch again to rebuild this. But I don\u2019t mind. We don\u2019t mind,\u201d he says. \u201cThe main thing now is, how can we stop this war?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Disclaimer<\/strong>
The information, opinions and recommendations presented in our guest blogs are those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect the values and beliefs of the International Science Council<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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