![]() ![]() We are losing seed diversity every day and this is the insurance policy for that."Įven a seemingly simple crop, such as wheat, may have 200,000 different varieties. But it's really a backup plan for seeds and crops. "Lots of people think that this vault is waiting for doomsday before we use it. "I'd say doomsday is happening everyday for crop varieties," said Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which helps manage the facility. The vault represents a chance to save as many as possible. ![]() ![]() It's able to protect up to 2.25 billion seeds from even "doomsday" scenarios like asteroid impacts and nuclear war.īut crop varieties are already vanishing at an astonishing pace for more mundane reasons, from shifting local weather patterns to disuse by farmers adopting new hybrids. The remarkable facility set on a rugged Arctic island off Norway is the ultimate global safety net for food security. It's essential to future food security," Fowler said.(Read more about seed banks around the world in National Geographic magazine.)-Brian HandwerkĪ conservationist cradles two vials of peas destined for deposit in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. And each variety has a suite of individual traits that determine how it fares in high or low temperatures, during droughts, or against certain diseases or pests."Even conservative projections of changing climate now indicate that by mid-century huge areas of some countries, in Africa for example, will be experiencing climates that are unlike any that have existed since the beginning of agriculture in those countries," Fowler explained."How will they become adapted to future climates? One way they can is by tapping into this rich storehouse of diversity and breeding new crops with traits that allow them to succeed in those climates. We are losing seed diversity every day and this is the insurance policy for that."Even a seemingly simple crop, such as wheat, may have 200,000 different varieties. The vault represents a chance to save as many as possible."I'd say doomsday is happening everyday for crop varieties," said Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which helps manage the facility. It's able to protect up to 2.25 billion seeds from even "doomsday" scenarios like asteroid impacts and nuclear war.But crop varieties are already vanishing at an astonishing pace for more mundane reasons, from shifting local weather patterns to disuse by farmers adopting new hybrids. The world used to cultivate more than 6,000 different plants but UN experts say we now get about 40% of our calories from three main crops - maize, wheat and rice - making food supplies vulnerable if climate change causes harvests to fail.A conservationist cradles two vials of peas destined for deposit in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. South Korea and Mexico were also among the nations making deposits on Wednesday. “The participation of countries in the Seed Vault’s mission is vital to underwriting the life insurance that genetic diversity represents,” said Stefan Schmitz, executive director of the Crop Trust, which manages the facility alongside Norway. Iraq’s first deposit will consist of 418 seed samples of wild and cultivated species, including wheat and rice, while Uruguay’s initial delivery comes in the form of 1,892 seeds of wheat and barley. More than 45,000 seed samples from 13 gene banks from Asia, Australia, Europe and Latin America will be added on Wednesday, lifting the total number of deposits to more than 1.2-million for the first time, the Norwegian ministry said. Launched in 2008, the vault acts as a last resort for national and regional gene banks, and played an essential role from 2015 to 2019 in rebuilding seed collections damaged during the war in Syria. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, set in permafrost caves on Spitsbergen island halfway between mainland Europe and the North Pole, is only opened three times a year to limit its seeds’ exposure to the outside world. Oslo - A vault built on an Arctic island to preserve the world’s crop seeds from war, disease and other catastrophes will receive new deposits on Wednesday, including for the first time from Iraq and Uruguay, Norway’s ministry of agriculture & food said.
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