PARIS: Scientists Geoffrey Hawtin and Cary Fowler, who on Thursday received the prestigious World Food Prize for “their work to preserve the world’s heritage of seeds”, are on a mission.

Their vocation is to safeguard as many seeds as possible so that one day the world can benefit from their genetic characteristics. Their work is all in the name of protecting global food security.

Hawtin and Fowler helped set up a world reserve of seeds dug into a glacier on the Norwegian archipelago Svalbard in the Arctic — where 1.25 million samples are now stored for preservation in the cold.

It was for this work they were named the 2024 winners of the World Food Prize, awarded to individuals who have increased the quality, quantity, or availability of food worldwide.

The goal is always to conserve as many agricultural seeds as possible, 75-year-old British-Canadian agronomist Hawtin told AFP.

“What actually changed a little bit since it opened in 2008 is the material going into it,” he said.

After mainly collecting seeds from “domesticated” plants like wheat and barley, the reserve is now welcoming more wild species that are more or less related to cultivated plants.

The latter mainly “have genes that are particularly interesting with climate change”, he said.