The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) signed Memorandum of Agreement for conservation of plant genetic resources in the National Permafrost Repository at Chang-La, Leh, Ladakh (J&K).
So India now has its very own seed vault in the permafrost. The above is from an ICAR press release from a couple of days ago. But The Hindu reported on the Permafrost Repository as long ago as early last year. This photograph is from that article, so things may have changed since then.
It’s not altogether clear to me why India would wish to do this, when it can send safety duplicates of its material to Svalbard for free and under black box conditions, but anyway.
The point of the story is in fact that she almost lost the landrace recently. What happened is that last year she came to visit us in Rome for a few months, and left the farm in the otherwise quite capable hands of her daughter-in-law. Problem is, Violet, unaware of the preciousness of the landrace seed, went and fed most of it to the family. Fortunately, a handful or so survived, and quickly went into the ground for multiplication when grandma returned. You can see it here above. A close-run thing indeed. She says she would have been very upset if she had lost that seed, and asked me whether I could get it into Svalbard. After all, is that not my boss holding some seeds in front of the