The Svalbard Global Seed Vault - sometimes referred to as a doomsday vault - is designed to withstand global warming, earthquakes and even nuclear strikes. Another one in Egypt was looted during last year's uprising. He noted that wars destroyed seed banks in Iraq and Afghanistan. More about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault."I think the events unfolding in Syria obviously underline the importance of having safety duplication outside of a country," he said, adding the facility had not been damaged in the military crackdown on an anti-government uprising. Gene banks in Afghanistan and Iraq have also been destroyed due to war. In 2015, the gene bank in Aleppo, Syria, was threatened by the ongoing civil war and prompted researchers in the Middle East to withdraw some seeds, the Verge reported. Yes, there are as many as 1,700 versions of the vault (called gene banks) around the world, according to Time.īut the Svalbard vault is used a backup storage unit for the hundreds of thousands of varieties stored in other gene banks, some of which have been threatened in the past. "Globally, the seed vault is, and will continue to be, the safest backup of crop diversity," the statement said. The plan is to improve the vault’s construction to prevent any future incidents. "It was not in our plans to think that the permafrost would not be there and that it would experience extreme weather like that," Hege Njaa Aschim of the Norwegian government told the Guardian.Īccording to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Arctic has warmed by six degrees since 1900, with a big part of the warming fueled by man-made climate change.īut for now, the vault is safe, Norway government representatives announced in a press release. » RELATED: Arctic sea ice shrinking to lowest levels ever for third straight year When temperatures rose above normal in Spring 2017, permafrost meltwater runoff flooded the entrance of the vault and threatened the seeds stored in the vault. The Global Crop Diversity Trust (Crop Trust), Nordic Gene Bank (NordGen) and an international advisory council help manage the facility, its funding and operations. The Global Seed Vault, which opened in 2008 was administered by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food on behalf of the Kingdom of Norway and reportedly cost approximately $9 million to build. One room in the vault houses seeds for more than 150,000 different varieties of wheat. It has the capacity to store 4.5 million seed samples with each sample containing about 500 seeds, so, according to the Crop Trust, a maximum of 2.25 billion seeds can be stored in the vault. More than 930,000 varieties of food crops are stored in the Global Seed Vault. » RELATED: How Georgians can watch the rare total solar eclipse this summer The vault is about 400 feet deep inside the mountain. The icy mountain housing the Seed Vault is called "Platåberget," or "plateau mountain" in English, according the Crop Trust. The vault is located on the Arctic tundra island of Spitsbergen in Svalbard, Norway. If disease pandemics, asteroid crashes, climate change or any other global catastrophes were to ensue, the seeds stored in the Global Seed Vault could be the source for humans to regrow the crops needed for survival.īut the vault was actually intended as a secure storage space for samples of other crop and plant collections at risk. Midnight sun reflects off the face of ridges on the West Coast of Spitsbergen on the morning of Midsummer on Jin Longyearbyen, Norway.
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