Short Wave - Ancient Seeds: A Possible Key To Climate Adaptation

Episode Date: February 24, 2023

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/3IZB2OdCurious about other potential climate solutions scientists are researching? Email us at [e-mail] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, shortwavers, Emily Kwong here, and today on the show, we have a big story about something very, very small. I'm talking about seeds. NPR's Ruth Sherlock first planted the idea with us. Emily didn't. I said I did for you, Ruth Sherlock, I would. Hello. Hello.

So, Ruth, you as a correspondent cover parts of the Middle East for NPR. and a lot of your reporting has focused on the ongoing civil war in Syria. And I understand that is the context we need for your story today. Exactly. So now the government has taken back much of the country, but there is still fighting going on. And more than half a million people have been killed. More than half the country's population has been displaced by fighting. The conflict has destroyed whole cities. And life there has been just terrifying.

Usually in the war, you have to be very careful. moving here and there. Rafat Azor was working in Syria until the war made that impossible. He's a researcher who breeds varieties of barley for an organization called, and it's a mouthful, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, or Ikada. He's worked there for over 40 years. What can I tell you?

I love everything. Since I plant the seed till I harvest them. So I live with them all of this time. He told me he loves his job so much that the hard disk on his computer is named Love Barley. I love that. Yeah. And yeah, the centre where he worked in Syria had a large seed bank. Emily, think of this place as a kind of time capsule.

It stores over 120,000 plants that are important to the human diet like wheat, legumes, barley. In fact, some of the varieties there are now actually extinct in the outside world. That is fascinating. Okay, so Rafat, he works for a seed bank. There are seed banks all over the world, but this one, Icarda, it just sounds really special. Yeah, it is really important, but you know, the whole collection could have been lost. Over a decade ago in 2011, the civil war began in Syria, and that war closed in the center and in the chaos of the conflict, which had numerous fighting factions and general lawlessness, some of Icarda's staff were kidnapped and others were even shot. shot at. Ikada's managers told their employees they had to leave. But the researchers then went to some pretty extreme lengths to save their work. For example, Rafat, the Bali breeder, told me that there was no way he was leaving Syria without his barley. So there were warplanes flying overhead by this

point and there was shell fire. But Rafat hired a bus. We can shift it hundreds of boxes to Lebanon. And you did it crossing front lines? It wasn't a simple journey, I imagine. Yes, yes, it wasn't as simple, yeah, yeah. This is amazing. It seems like a lot of risk, honestly, to take for barley. Right, you know, this journey involved around 200 miles, and it criss-crossed territory controlled by different armed groups.

But here's the thing, Emily, if he and other Ikada researchers hadn't saved their work like this, the world would be in a worse place today, because these little seeds and the years of research that's gone into them now really matter for climate change. Oh, that's 100% right. Yes, sure. So today on the show, Ruth Sherlock tells us the story of this daring mission to rescue some super seeds from a bank in Syria

and how a seed bank may hold the keys to our agricultural future in the face of climate change. This is Shortwave, the daily daily. ASE science podcast from NPR. So Ruth, you were telling us about this seed bank called Akarta that was caught up in the Syrian war. What happened to it? Well, armed groups did eventually take over the Akada Center in Syria completely. But by that point, researchers had managed to save most of the seed collection.

And it's now in a different country, across the border in Lebanon, where Akada is actually originally from. Their center in Lebanon is in the agricultural Bekhar Valley region. Marianna Yazbek, the manager of the seed bank there, or gene bank, as she calls it, offered to take us inside. Let me show you the gene bank. Not everyone gets to go into the gene. Thank you. Yes. It's like a giant walk-in fridge and it's minus four degrees Fahrenheit.

There are these rows and rows of sliding metal racks that are filled with small aluminium bags with seeds inside. So conserving them in this room will make them dry. when they dry, it will make them live longer. That's so cool. I love picturing this little library of seeds. But as we were saying earlier, seed banks are nothing new. So what makes this seed bank in Lebanon so unique? Well, lots of the samples in this seed bank, Mariana tells me,

have been collected in countries that span from Iran to Egypt, the area that's known as the Fertile Crescent. And this is where agriculture started. So we are collecting material that has been done. developed by the first agriculturist, basically. This is where these crops that populations now rely on around the world, like wheat and oats, actually come from. So this is what makes them different from, say, wheat you'd find in the United States.

That is a copy of the original, whereas here, the wheat seeds that grow in the wild have survived for millennia. So the seed bank is storing about 40 years of scientists' work, but millions of years of evolution. And maybe this is obvious, but why does it? it matter if there is an original wheat seed versus having a copy that's been adapted for modern agriculture? Why do we want to hold on to the OG one? Well, yeah, it wasn't obvious to me. And I asked Marianne, and she said, you know, it's all about what's inside the seeds DNA.

The wilder relatives of crops have been evolving on earth for millions of years. And they have witnessed so many different climates. So they have deserved. that fingerprint in the DNA that enabled them to adapt and survive different kinds of climate. These seeds are packed with this kind of toughness, this richness of nutrients and diversity that you don't always find in modern day varieties. And as well as storing these seeds, you know, Icarda also grows plants for them to replicate them and then distributes their seeds to scientists who use them for research in other countries. Cool. And what kinds of things are scientists in these other countries find?

using these seeds. It is pretty remarkable. They've transformed agriculture in places like Ethiopia with crops that are more resistant to drought, and they've developed a new kind of chickpea that can be planted in winter. This is Hassan Mashlab, the head of the centre. In several countries in Asia, double yield of chickpe, so you can imagine the effect it has on food security. Emily, we started the show by saying this is a big story. That we did. But what I told you so far, that's not what I mean by a big story. The fact is, these seeds might actually save us all. Really? Okay. I'm interested in that. Tell me more. Okay, maybe I am being just a little bit dramatic, but it is kind of true.

We have now with our collaboration with France and Spain, Portugal, Denmark. This is Puaad Malouf, and he breeds legumes at the central. in Lebanon. And here he's telling me how scientists in over 30 countries in Europe are now all keen for the seeds from Ikada. And why? Why is that? Because these seeds, they are all super useful to helping countries adapt to climate change. So for example, let's talk about FRAD's work on legumes like lentils and chickpeas. These crops also play an important role in having more sustainable climate change because it control carbon dioxide emissions. It captures, yes.

He's saying these crops take a lot of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and they also release nitrogen into the soil which means farmers have to use fewer chemical fertilizers and he's saying legumes take very little water to grow, making them a great alternative protein to say cows. So you are saving the environment. And the second way you save water. So what you're saying is that scientists in countries whose climates are getting hotter and drier are now coming to Akarta for seeds, seeds that know how to survive in this kind of heat and limited rainfall. Yes, exactly. And these seeds are now being sought after all over the world.

I'm Dil Tava Raja and I am a professor here at the Clemson University, South Carolina, USA. So Dil has worked with Akarta researchers and Akada seeds from. over a decade, she explores ways to improve nutritional content of lentils. And she extracted genetic material from these lentil plants that she got from Akada. And then her team used those to breed crops that contain these low digestible carbohydrates or prebiotic carbohydrates. And these compounds can help regulate your weight by improving your gut. And she says, these carbohydrates are not only good for human health, but also for the planet. So when you're growing in a stressful, environment like high temperature or low rainfall or in winter conditions.

These rafinose, oligocerates and the sugar alcohols act as a humactantin and they save the plant from freezing or save the plant from drying out. That's impressive. Yeah, she's saying that the plant becomes more resilient, which matters because climate change is making growing seasons more unpredictable. And these seeds from Maccada though are exciting because they are. actually able to withstand this new weather. In fact, she's now planting

legumes in South Carolina in the winter, which is the first time that she's actually managed to plant these crops in this state. And this is because she's actually taken genetic material from Icarda and these seeds have made these plants sort of less susceptible

susceptible to things like fungal diseases. She says this is being replicated now across the American South and in some other places. So now Florida, Tennessee, South Dakota, South Carolina,

North Carolina, Virginia, all these places they are introducing legumes into their crop rotation. The influence of Akarta has just spread. And spread and spread and spread. And you know,

this is just one example of Akada's impact on the US, though. There are others. One of the notable cases, a wheat seed that was collected by Akada in Iran is now saving farmers in the US

tens of millions of dollars because it's resistant to the Hesian fly, this pest which is now thriving in these warmer temperatures. Ruth, this is fascinating. Just the ways that this could help food security in the U.S., the spread of Icarda throughout the world. And it's interesting to listen to you talk about this because in the past, we've heard stories about crops that have been genetically engineered by humans or developed for massive industrial agriculture, and that can boost crop yields. But yeah, they're incredibly susceptible to pests and changes in weather. And it sounds like these seeds are the opposite. It's not engineering the plants.

It's going back to their origins. Like evolution made them naturally more resilient and potentially helpful to industrial agriculture at the scale. We do it now. Exactly. You really nailed it. So look, most of the experts I've spoken to are saying, you know, you can't and you probably shouldn't completely do away with industrial agriculture because human population. are growing at such a rate that it's needed. But they say these seeds, the wild origin species of these crops and varieties from early

agriculture, also offer incredible richness and diversity. And this is Marianna Yazberg's point, you know, the manager of the Akkadigine Bank in Lebanon. She thinks it's this diversity that's actually what's going to help us adapt to this rapidly changing climate. These seeds, they hold so many secrets, if you like, so many answers in their DNA. and there are still thousands of seed varieties in that gene bank that haven't been tested. So these discoveries so far, they're pretty epic, but they might be just the beginning. A big epic tale about seeds.

Ruth Sherlock, thank you so much for coming on the show and bringing us this reporting. Thank you so much. If you have the seed of an idea that you want us to water, send us an email. We're a shortwave at npr.org. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger with help from Margaret Serino. It was edited by our managing producer Rebecca Ramirez. Britt Hansen and Anil Oza checked the facts. Our audio engineer was Jobi Tanseko.

Special thanks to Jawadris Allah, who helped produce this story in Lebanon. Brendan Crump is our podcast coordinator. Our senior director of programming is Beth Donovan. And the senior vice president of programming is Anya Grundman. I'm Emily Kwong. And I'm Ruth Sherlock. Thank you for listening to Shortwave, the Daily Science Podcast from NPR.