“We need to preserve this biodiversity, this crop diversity, to provide healthy diets and nutritious foods, and for providing farmers, especially smallholders, with sustainable livelihoods so that they can adapt to new conditions.”Īlready, one-in-nine people go to bed hungry globally, according to the United Nations’ World Food Programme, and scientists have predicted that erratic weather patterns could reduce both the quality and the quantity of food available. Inside this building is 13,000 years of agricultural history, says Brian Lainoff, lead partnerships coordinator of the Crop Trust, which manages the vault, as he hauls open the huge steel. “The seed vault is the backup in the global system of conservation to secure food security on Earth,” Stefan Schmitz, executive director of the Crop Trust, the Bonn-based organization which manages the vault, told Reuters. Photo by ERNESTO BENAVIDES/AFP/Getty Images Seeds of these tubercules were sent to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SISV) in Norway. The Global Seed Vault has been dubbed the doomsday vault, which conjures up an image of a reserve of seeds for use in case of an apocalyptic event or a global catastrophe. An employee of the Potato International Centre (CIP) in Lima, handles seeds of potatoes and sweet potatoes being cultivated at the Centre. Sometimes called the doomsday vault, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is seen as humanity’s last hope against extinction after a world crisis.
#Inside doomsday vault upgrade
In October, Norway completed an $11 million, year-long upgrade of the whole facility. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Located in the arctic circle, The Global Seed Vault isn't simply just a large storage facility for seeds. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.What is secured inside the vault is one of the most important global public. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault offers safe, free-of-charge, long-term storage of duplicates of seed samples stored in the worlds genebanks. Watch this next: The Fungarium and Millennium Seed Bank Partnership at Kew. Its probably no surprise that the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is off-bounds. Inside doomsday vault near the North Pole designed to prevent human extinction. According to The Economist, “the Svalbard vault is a backup for the world’s 1,750 seed banks, storehouses of agricultural biodiversity.”įrom Crop Trust, take a 360 degree tour of the vault. The national seed bank of the Philippines was damaged by flooding and later destroyed by a fire the seed banks of Afghanistan and Iraq have been lost completely. War and civil strife have a history of destroying some genebanks.
While the popular press has emphasized its possible utility in the event of a major regional or global catastrophe, it will be more frequently accessed when genebanks lose samples due to mismanagement, accident, equipment failures, funding cuts, and natural disasters. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault’s mission is to provide a safety net against accidental loss of diversity in traditional genebanks. “There are nearly 160,000 samples of wheat, and approaching 150,000 samples of rice.” The Guardian also explains that “the site was built to be disaster-proof: 130 metres up the mountain in case of sea-level rise, earthquake resistant, and with a natural insulation of permafrost to ensure the contents were kept frozen for decades to come.”ĪJ+ gives us a look inside The Doomsday Vault, but its mission is more practical and less sci-fi than its nickname. An ice covered entrance door to the international gene bank Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV) near Longyearbyen on Spitsbergen, Norway, October 20, 2015.
It’s something you’d half expect to find in a Bond movie: set 120 metres (394 feet) inside a mountain, it’s the site of an old coal mine and boasts. On the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault protects around 865,000 seed samples from all over the world. Deep within the Arctic Circle, on the frozen island of Spitsbergen in the Norwegian Svalbard archipelago, is a giant vault.
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