It quotes the Agriculture Ministry's description of the planned work: "construction of a new, concrete-built access tunnel, as well as a service building to house emergency power and refrigerating units and other electrical equipment that emits heat through the tunnel." (There was a breach at the vault last year. Norway on Friday announced $13 million in upgrades to what was originally a $9 million construction job, reports Reuters. Seeds aren't the only thing pouring into the vault: money, too, in order to extend the vault's "viability," as Bloomberg puts it. Voice of America reports 73 institutions from around the globe have contributed seeds, and it points out a notable country not found on the list: China, though it's apparently discussing the possibility of making a deposit. That's enough to nearly fill one of the vault's three chambers, leaving room for what scientists believe will be the eventual total count: 2.2 million crops. The BBC puts its number of deposits at 1,059,646, which is 90,000 less than what could have been following a withdrawal related to the war in Syria. The Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway, has since 2008 stored seeds within a mountain on a Norwegian island 800 miles from the North Pole, and on Monday the number of crops it stores crossed the 1 million mark, thanks to a new shipment that included varieties of black-eyed pea and the Bambara groundnut. The company says being inside a mountain increases security, while the permafrost offers a "fail-safe" seed conservation method.Monday was a "really significant" day for the so-called Doomsday Vault-and not just because it was its 10th birthday. The Svalbard vault, however, is protected by its remote and very chilly location. They will be sent once paperwork is completed, she said."Īccording to Crop Trust, there are some 1,700 seed banks in the world, but many of them are vulnerable to natural disasters, war and even mundane hazards like insufficient funding or a broken freezer. "ICARDA wants almost 130 boxes out of 325 it had deposited in the vault, containing a total of 116,000 samples, she told Reuters. ICARDA moved its headquarters to Beirut from Aleppo in 2012 because of the war. "Grethe Evjen, an expert at the Norwegian Agriculture Ministry, said the seeds had been requested by the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA). Reuters reports that the seeds requested by researchers include "samples of wheat, barley and grasses suited to dry regions" to replace "seeds in a gene bank near the Syrian city of Aleppo that has been damaged by the war." But the human toll isn't the only cost of the violence. More than 250,000 people have been killed in the ongoing Syrian civil war and millions of others have been forced from their homes. This is why we urged them to deposit so early on." "But knew in 2008 that Syria was in for an interesting couple of years. "We did not expect a retrieval this early," Crop Trust spokesman Brian Lainoff told NPR. What apocalyptic event prompted the removal of some of humanity's food backups? It is the final back up."īut now, less than 10 years after the opening, officials are preparing to withdraw seeds for the first time. It will secure, for centuries, millions of seeds representing every important crop variety available in the world today. "The purpose of the Vault is to store duplicates (backups) of seed samples from the world's crop collections. Crop Trust, the company that runs the seed vault, says on its website that the vault is "the final backup": Extending nearly 500 feet into the mountain, it's intended to safeguard the planet's food supply and biodiversity in the event a doomsday catastrophe like nuclear war or crippling disease wipes out varieties of plants. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, built in 2008, stores more than 850,000 seed samples from nations all over the world. But the gray building holds the key to the earth's biodiversity. Narrow and sharply edged, the facility cuts an intimidating figure against the barren Arctic background. The doomsday seed vault described by its creators as the 'final backup' of the world's crop collections is making its first withdrawal less than 10 years after it opened because of the civil war in Syria. A tall rectangular building juts out of a mountainside on a Norwegian island just 800 miles from the North Pole.
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