How many kinds of apples can you think of? It probably won’t take you long to make a list. We have Macintosh, Golden Delicious, Red Delicious, Granny Smith, and a dozen more varieties. When you walk through the produce department in your grocery store, you might even feel like you have too many apple varieties to choose from! But did you know that in the 1930s, people in just the United States were growing 10,000 different kinds of apples? That’s right—10,000!

Have you ever bitten into a yellow Maiden’s Blush apple? Have you tasted jelly made of the Black Ben Davis apple? Not many people have. These days, we recognize about 25 kinds of apples. But some old-timers remember the taste of extinct varieties. And they will tell you: The apples we have now just don’t taste as good.

In today’s world, most seeds are mass produced. That means companies make lots of them at one time. The companies try to choose the best seeds available. They want their crops to last a long time. They want them to travel well. That way they can sell them at markets around the world. Mass production can mean that the world has more food than it would otherwise. But it also means that family varieties of seeds die out, never to be seen (or tasted!) again.

People have always depended on seeds for survival. But now they depend on very few kinds of seeds. You can see that if you compare lists of seeds for sale at different times. In 1903, you could order 554 different kinds of cabbage seeds. Eighty years later, you could only order 28. Tomato seeds have a similar story. In 1903, you could choose from 408 kinds. In 1983, you could choose from only 79.

Scientists working at the Svalbard seed vault don’t just want to save people in case of disaster. They also want to save seed types. It looks like the plant species need saving already!