A failed power-transfer system at the Pakal Field Seed Archive in Campeche pushed its storage room to 26.1°C (79°F) on 3 October, putting 6,400 packets of native seeds at risk. Thalalla and her colleagues shifted the most vulnerable samples by hand; in the process, they found 312 older lots in a stone chamber whose stable conditions had gone largely unrecorded.
Early germination tests show 78% of seeds from 31 of those lots sprouted, including wild beans and maize relatives collected decades ago. Staff had treated many as duplicate material with uncertain value. The results, still preliminary, suggest the chamber may offer a useful backup for seed storage in remote areas where reliable electricity is difficult to secure.
The chamber beneath the archive
Thalalla, 42, has spent 14 years collecting seeds from forest-edge farms and dry clearings around Xpujil, about 18 km (11 miles) from the archive. She grew up helping relatives sort beans for planting and says she came to research through a practical question: why did some saved seed survive a hot season while other batches failed? Her work now tracks plants that may help farmers cope with shifting rainfall.
The archive’s powered room is designed to keep seed samples cool and dry. A voltage fluctuation damaged its automatic transfer switch, so the backup generator did not take over when the supply failed. The state electricity operator restored power after 11 hours, but the climate controls took longer to restart. Adrian J. Fellner, an electrical engineer who examined the system, said the fault was “a single failed component in a chain that had not been tested under load for months”.
What the tests may show
During the move, Thalalla noticed that the stone chamber stayed cool even as the main room warmed. A small battery logger placed there years earlier recorded an average of 18.7°C (65.7°F) and 37% humidity over the past 18 months. The chamber, built into the archive’s limestone foundation, had been used for boxes that were difficult to fit on the main shelves.
The team planted samples from 31 lots in controlled trays and counted sprouts after eight days. Twenty-four lots germinated at rates above 60%; the overall rate was 78%, compared with 21% in an older test of a separate batch kept in the powered room. Researchers have not yet compared the seeds genetically or tested how well the resulting plants withstand drought, so the early figures do not establish that the chamber is better storage.
For Thalalla, the unexpected result is also a case for keeping local knowledge alongside lab equipment. She recalled relatives storing seed in the coolest, driest part of a house, but said the archive had never measured its own stone room carefully. “We thought we were moving boxes to get them out of danger. We found a place that had been doing quiet work for us,” she said.
Fellner said the archive should repair the transfer switch and test the generator on a regular schedule, rather than treat the stone chamber as a replacement for powered storage. The archive plans to install 12 temperature and humidity loggers in the room and repeat germination tests over the next six months. It also wants to check whether the chamber’s conditions remain steady through the hotter part of the year.
The seed lots include plants collected from farms and forest margins, not a complete sample of the region’s biodiversity. Still, Thalalla said the episode changed how she thinks about the archive’s role: it must protect seed from both climate stress and the systems intended to guard it. “Now we know there is another layer of protection here,” she said, “and we need to understand exactly what it can do.”
