tenerife seed bank agricultural vault

Tenerife’s Noah’s Ark: Seeds of Survival Hidden Beneath the Botanic Gardens

Compiled with the help of artificial intelligence, based on Spanish-language information. Source below the article.

The Hidden Vault Beneath Puerto de la Cruz

Beneath the Botanic Gardens of Puerto de la Cruz, protected by reinforced concrete walls and safe from storms, eruptions, fires and bombs, Tenerife guards a part of its history. It is not written in old archives nor displayed in glass cases. It lies locked inside thousands of seeds and plant material samples that have fed generations upon generations of islanders. In the basement, two chambers of ten square metres each, a drying room and several refrigerators preserve cereals, ancient potatoes, pulses, vegetables, fruit trees, vines and tobacco plants – an agricultural heritage of incalculable value that could survive even a cataclysm.

Part of this legacy is also safe far from the island, distributed among some of the world’s major germplasm banks. Twenty-five varieties from Tenerife – mainly cereals, pulses and lettuces – are held in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a giant underground store excavated beneath the ice on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen in the Arctic, which conserves seeds from over a million crop plants from across the planet. There is also a substantial representation at the Centre for Plant Genetic Resources (CRF) in Alcalá de Henares (Madrid), at the United States germplasm centre in Colorado, and in other banks. However, the largest collection – more than 3,500 samples – remains in Tenerife, next to the Botanic Gardens.

Inside the CCBAT: Tenerife’s Agricultural Noah’s Ark

This native Noah’s Ark is called the Tenerife Agricultural Biodiversity Conservation Centre (CCBAT). Venturing into its laboratories and cold chambers is like travelling through centuries of evolution of the food that has sustained islanders since the first settlers of Tenerife, the Guanches, who arrived more than 2,000 years ago from North Africa laden with seeds – mainly cereals – to guarantee their survival.

A first glance at the corridors and rooms of the CCBAT is enough to understand what goes on there. The walls and tables are covered with posters of the different ancient potatoes of Tenerife (coloradas, negras, bonitas, torrentas, azucenas, pelucas, borrallas…), traditional grains (Teno lentil, barbilla wheat, plaganuda barley, brown oat, chochos, red chickpea…), and garlic varieties (cabeza menuda, criollo, ajo porro, cabeza grande…), as well as figs, tomatoes, peppers, apples, pears and onions (Guayonje, San Juan, Masca and Carrizal Alto…). In the laboratories, among pipettes, microscopes and gloves, the centre’s mission becomes even clearer.

Desiré Afonso, head of this refuge, and Nani Velázquez, coordinator of vegetatively propagated crops, point during a tour of the main building of the complex to the trays laid out on the tables: there are chickpea seeds, others of Virginia tobacco – “this is the one used to make island cigars and it is the smallest seed in the collection” –, dry branches of different types of parsley and prickly pear leaves.

Afonso and Velázquez stress that the value of these varieties lies not only in their exclusivity and the information they provide, but also in their nutritional worth. These are products that have acquired their own DNA, having adapted over centuries to Tenerife’s environmental conditions, and which possess “more properties” than those from intensive agriculture. They cite gofio as an example: “We have carried out studies comparing cereals used in some mills in Tenerife with those found in Guanche archaeological sites. Not only have we found over 99% genetic matches, demonstrating that today’s cereals come from those used by the island’s first inhabitants, but we have also detected that their nutritional value is far superior to that of a conventional cereal. The same applies to many other products.”

From Humble Beginnings in 2003

It all began in 2003. On 5 May, the Governing Commission of the Cabildo of Tenerife created the Tenerife Agricultural Biodiversity Conservation Centre. Its first director and great driving force was Domingo Ríos, one of the Canary Islands’ leading experts in this field, who held the post until 2025, when he obtained a position as senior lecturer in Crop Production at the University of La Laguna. The first headquarters was installed in small rooms of a building in Tacoronte that had housed an office of the Agricultural Extension Agency.

Integrated into the National Network of Germplasm Banks, Ríos and a small team of enthusiasts took on the challenge of preventing the loss of Tenerife’s agricultural diversity. To this end, they launched tasks of collecting local material, conservation, characterisation, multiplication, regeneration and documentation. Key figures joined the team along the way, such as Agustín Hernández, conservation assistant.

Ten years later, in 2013, the CCBAT moved to the Botanic Gardens of Puerto de la Cruz, to a secure facility befitting its importance. The most significant rooms are in the basement. In two chambers and several refrigerators, the more than 3,500 seeds and plant material samples are kept under the temperature and humidity conditions stipulated by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). One room is dedicated exclusively to the ancient potato. It holds units of 110 different varieties in various baskets, always at four degrees. These so-called ‘papas bonitas’ are among the greatest delicacies of typical Canarian cuisine, with limited production that in the best harvest years does not exceed 20,000 kilos on Tenerife, yet with flavours much appreciated by chefs worldwide. They arrived from Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Ecuador in different waves and acquired their own character by acclimatising to the conditions of the mid-altitude zones, particularly on the northern slopes. The historian José de Viera y Clavijo, in his Dictionary of Natural History of the Canary Islands (1799), dates the arrival from South America of the first varieties now known as the ancient potatoes of the Canaries to 1622.

The Seed Chamber: A Fortress of Life

After the drying room, you need to put on a coat to enter the seed chamber, the CCBAT’s great treasure. Several jackets hang by the entrance in case anyone arrives unprepared. And with good reason: inside, the temperature is minus four degrees Celsius. Hundreds of hermetically sealed glass jars of various sizes fill the metal shelving with more than 1,500 types of pulses, cereals, vegetables and fruit trees. Desiré Afonso and Nani Velázquez, accompanied by the Cabildo’s Primary Sector councillor, Valentín González, barely remain a few minutes inside. The measures are strict. Any minimal alteration could affect this larder at the end of the world.

Each jar carries labels with the scientific name and the plant’s ‘vegetable ID’, plus a small bag of silica gel inside. If the gel changes colour, it means the seal is no longer airtight and the container must be checked or replaced. Under these conditions, and after prior treatments, stresses González, these seeds “can last for thousands and thousands of years”. The space is so tightly controlled that even the slightest change in temperature or humidity triggers the sensor alarms.

This fortress not only preserves for the future the staple ingredients of local cuisine; it also provides services to farmers, who can request reproductive material under certain conditions and at specific times of year. Research likewise offers valuable information on protecting crops from pests, maximising irrigation, and finding ways to mitigate the consequences of climate change.

Four Farms and a Living Collection

The CCBAT is completed by four farms that conserve 1,790 fruit trees and maintain hundreds of rootstocks for grafting: Las Haciendas (Candelaria), with stone fruit trees, pears, apple trees, chestnut trees, prickly pears, fig trees and vines; La Mosca (La Laguna), which holds partial duplicates of the fig and stone fruit collections; Boquín (Icod de los Vinos), with partial duplicates of the chestnut and peach collections; and Las Llanadas (Los Realejos), home to the main collections of apple, plum and pear trees.

Domingo Ríos feels “very proud” to have helped create this plant refuge, into which the island corporation invests 666,000 euros each year – in its activities and maintenance alone. Among those who played a decisive role in its establishment, Ríos singles out a farmer known as the guardian of Tenerife’s agricultural diversity. Tomás González, a veteran grower of 66 with a plot in Ravelo (El Sauzal), was “vital in ensuring that today we have, for example, a great collection of ancient potatoes”, notes the university professor. “He also contributed to the pulse and vine collections. He is a very observant man, with a sixth sense for agriculture, great knowledge and the passion to pass the baton to new generations.”

When helping his father tend the crops, Tomás would analyse everything: flowering, resilience, the ability to adapt to changes in the climate… He helped save from extinction, among many other varieties, a type of chickpea that was planted on Montaña de San Roque. “My father inherited the experience of his parents, grandparents and great-great-grandparents and passed it on to me,” he recounts. Now he devotes himself to ensuring that chain of transmission continues.

Lost and Found: The Fight Against Extinction

In the sanctuary of the primary sector in Puerto de la Cruz, Desiré Afonso and Nani Velázquez admit that hundreds or thousands of natural products made in Tenerife have been lost over time due to all kinds of circumstances. But every so often, one believed to be extinct reappears and can still be saved. They cite, for example, the case of a family who were renovating an old house they owned. “They came across a trunk with barley seeds over 50 years old,” recalls Desiré. “There were more than 25 kilos. Apparently they were dead, but we persevered and some plants sprouted on the La Mosca farm. Thanks to that we were able to conserve this cereal.”

They have been working for over 20 years and new varieties continue to emerge thanks to the collaboration of farmers. Some time ago they learned of a type of bubango from Vilaflor and the heights of Adeje known as burriango. “We didn’t know it, had never seen it, but in that area it was well known,” recalls the centre’s head. “We went to see it and indeed it was a variety very different from those we knew. We rescued it and multiplied it. It is a cross between bubango and pumpkin.”

Interest extends to varieties from other islands. They are currently trying to rescue an onion from La Gomera, known as ‘huevo de carnero’ (ram’s egg) for its distinctive elongated shape. “A few years ago some samples arrived, but we couldn’t get them to reproduce. We’ve heard there’s a farmer on La Gomera who has it, and we’re waiting to visit him to see if it matches that variety and we can rescue it.” The presence of island seeds in other banks around the world has also helped expand the collections. Staff have in fact located Tenerife durum wheats that are rarely seen today and have managed to gather up to 15 varieties.

A Living Legacy Worth Sharing

Outreach is another fundamental facet of the CCBAT. Rescuing all this heritage would be of little use if the public does not know it exists. “People need to know that eating certain dishes of typical local cuisine is a journey through hundreds and hundreds of years of agricultural and cultural history, full of sweat, of overcoming challenges, of changes to which we have had to adapt,” emphasise Desiré Afonso and Nani Velázquez. That is why they are clear that saving every seed and every cutting is “preserving a piece of history and popular wisdom that we cannot allow to sink into oblivion”.

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