![]() 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. The genetic diversity found in the vault provides a critical safety net, the agency says.Įven a seemingly simple crop, such as wheat, may have 200,000 different varieties. When crops are consolidated they become more vulnerable to disease, pests, droughts, or other threats. In fact, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that three-quarters of the world's crop biodiversity is no longer being planted in farmers’ fields. We are losing seed diversity every day and this is the insurance policy for that,” said Fowler, referring to the fact that many crop varieties are disappearing thanks to shifts in weather, societal preferences, and market pressures. 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 every day for crop varieties,” Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which helps manage the facility, said in a previous interview. The mostly subterranean facility was designed to protect up to 2.25 billion seeds. It was designed to serve as the ultimate safety net for food security in case of nuclear war, asteroid impact, or other apocalyptic scenarios. The Svalbard seed bank opened on the island of Longyearbyen in 2008 and contains around 860,000 samples, from countries all over the globe. Scientists have specifically requested drought-friendly seeds of wheat, barley, and grasses from the vault, which is tucked into an Arctic mountainside on the archipelago of Svalbard, about 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) from the North Pole. Those seeds are needed by plant researchers who are working on the next crops to be planted in the Middle East and beyond, in order to try to stay a step ahead of pests and drought and increase yields to feed a growing population. This week the organization asked for some of their seeds back from the doomsday vault as a precautionary measure to duplicate the material. Syrian scientists have re-established the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas in a decentralized model, with staff in eight surrounding countries and a temporary headquarters in Beirut. As ISIS controls part of Syria and refugees stream across Europe, destruction of antiquities and infrastructure continues. Thanks to Syria’s civil war, the region’s primary seed vault in Aleppo has been forced to operate in a limited fashion, amid fighting that has left several hundred thousand dead and forced an estimated 11 million to become refugees. Rising concern over the ability of countries to grow food has led to the first ever request for a deposit from the “doomsday” seed vault in a frigid corner of Norway.
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