It is the final back up.”Īcross the world there are about 1700 seed banks to maintain biodiversity and food security, but many of them are vulnerable to natural disasters, war and even banal problems like lack of fund or a broken freezer. It will secure, for centuries, millions of seeds representing every important crop variety available in the world today. Global Crop Diversity Trust, the company which helps manage the facility, says on their website, “The purpose of the Vault is to store duplicates (backups) of seed samples from the world’s crop collections. At times like the present century, when we are losing seed diversity every other day due to shift in weather, societal preference, diseases, pests, market pressures and other threats, the vault acts as a critical safety net and safeguards global food supplies and crop biodiversity. With a total capacity to store 2.5 billion seeds (4.5 million varieties with 500 seeds per variety on average), it is already housing more than 860,000 samples from all most every country on the planet. Also, being inside a mountain increases security, while the permafrost offers a failsafe seed conservation method.
Remoteness of the location and the Arctic chill protects the vault. Even in the event of power failure, the vault would stay frozen and sealed for atleast 200 years. (Image source: Crop Trust)īuilt precisely for such eventualities, The Global Seed Vault located 800 miles from the North Pole on Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, is designed to serve as ”the final backup” in the event of a doomsday catastrophe like nuclear war, asteroid impact, crippling diseases wiping out large plant varieties or any other apocalyptic scenarios.Įxtending nearly 500 feet into the mountain, it is built to survive rising sea levels, power outages and other calamities that could damage the seeds. Plant scientists have specifically asked for the drought resistant seed varieties of wheat, barley, and grasses from the vault, to re-establish the crops lost during the war and also continue their research to stay a step ahead of pests and drought and to improve yields. Thanks to the ongoing civil war is Syria, which has damaged the Aleppo’s seed vault, derailing it from its role as a hub for seeds growing and seed distribution in the Middle East. It’s barely been 8 years since the construction of the world’s doomsday seed vault in 2008, in a frigid Arctic mountainside on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, that the first ever request for withdrawal from the deposit has popped up.
The center was was awarded the Gregor Mendel Innovation Prize earlier this year for quickly responding to the fighting in Syria and successfully duplicating almost their entire collection.ĭesigned to conserve what it describes as “one of the most important natural resources on earth,” the Global Seed Vault has the capacity to store 4.5 million samples and currently holds more than 860,000 samples from crops found in almost every country-making it the most diverse collection of food crops in the world. The location of the vault means it’s not easily accessible, the permafrost ensures the seed samples will remain frozen even without power, and its above sea level so it’s not vulnerable to flooding.Researchers from ICARDA, have requested for the backup seeds deposited in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, to restart their collection after the primary gene bank in Aleppo got damaged due to Syria’s civil war.
ICARDA researchers had previously deposited 80% of their collection into the Global Seed Vault and now want to withdraw nearly 130 out of 325 sample boxes, according to Reuters. The samples will be sent to ICARDIA’s new headquarters once all the paperwork is completed. Researchers from ICARDA had to move their headquarters from Aleppo in Syria to Beirut in Lebanon in 2012 as a result of the Syrian conflict. The International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) is one of 11 specialized seed banks tasked with preserving the biodiversity of the world’s crops.
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