Seed Hunter (ATOM Study Guide)

How can we survive perhaps the greatest danger we now face – climate change? Global Warming may be a contentious issue for many but there's no argument – some areas of our planet that were once 'food bowls', abundant, fertile and productive land, are now dust bowls where people scratch a living from the dry soil and hope for rain.

This documentary and its subject, Dr Ken Street, have a very clear answer. We need to go back to our roots. Somewhere out there in the remote mountains are people who still grow the tough, traditional species of our food plants. These are the 'landraces', the hardy species and varieties that can withstand dry conditions, harsh winters and baking summers and still produce adequate crops. And oh how we need them now!

In the twentieth century, new varieties of crop plants like wheat were developed to feed the fast growing population of the world. No longer could we rely on subsistence farmers to feed the exploding population of developing nations and high yielding varieties replaced the traditional crop strains that were tough but inadequate. However, as the climate changes we now need the genes of those same ancient varieties to help develop new varieties that still have the high yield benefits of modern crops, but in addition also have the capacity to withstand hotter, drier conditions. Just a fraction of a degree change in average temperatures can be enough to stop many crops from flowering and producing seed and fruit – our food. (And climate forecasters are predicting a change of several degrees).

This is why Ken Street is a man on a mission. He takes his team into the mountains of Tajikistan where, struggling against low budgets, local officials and time, they collect ancient varieties of wheat and other grains. He is also on a search for what he calls 'green gold', one plant in particular – the wild chick pea. Chickpeas are the ultimate food for dry zones, rich in protein and nutrients; the meat that you can grow when you can't afford meat. Not only does he want to collect traditional farmed varieties but he wants the mother plant, the wild species that gave rise to the modern farm plant. He wants its toughness, its potential resilience to disease, pests, climate; its DNA with which to breed new, hardy hybrids that will grow in other places where climate change and poor soils are putting pressure on agriculture.

But everywhere he looks, the villages are growing modern wheat little different to what is found in Australia, his expedition companion informs him. And he should know – he's an Australian wheat farmer. As for the elusive chickpea, the local farmers have pretty much given up on the crop because the modern varieties have not been able to cope with the drying of the climate. And no one can tell him if any wild chickpea still exists. Is this vital wild species which can survive cold and drought now extinct?

Along the way he visits one of the world's most important seed repositories the Vavilov Institute in St Petersburg and finds it sadly fallen on hard times. But the world is waking up to the threats posed to its food production and Ken travels with some of the precious, ancient seeds he has collected to the massive new seed storage facility above the Arctic Circle. It has been christened the Doomsday Vault, a storage facility cut into the remote, icy cliffs of Svalbard, a Norwegian island in the Arctic Ocean where the permafrost will keep vital heritage seed safe in its deep freeze. The vault has been built to withstand almost any disaster we can conceive. It is a vast concrete locker that could be the key to the survival of humanity.