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The Svalbard Global Seed Vault secures over 14,000 new seed samples, enhancing efforts to preserve crop diversity and ensure future food security

About Arctic doomsday seed vault

• The Svalbard Global Seed Vault aims to provide insurance against incremental loss of crop diversity
• It also provides insurance against catastrophic loss of crop diversity held in traditional gene banks around the world.
• As of last year, seed duplicates of around 1,300,000 samples from almost every country globally have been safeguarded in the vault.
• It was established in 2008 in the month of February.
• It is located in the island of Spitsbergen, of the Svalbard archipelago in northern Norway in the Arctic Ocean.
• The main purpose of it is to serve as a backup storage for seed samples protecting them from
• natural disasters
• war
• other events that could damage or destroy seed collections in other locations.
• It is owned by Norway
• It is managed in partnership between the Norwegian Ministry of Agriculture and Food, the regional gene bank, Nord Gen and Non-Profit organisation, Crop Trust.
• The seed boxes are stored under the black-box conditions, which means the depositors are the only ones who can withdraw their own seeds.
• The Seed Vault can store 4.5 million varieties of crops.
• A maximum of 2.5 billion seeds may be stored in the Seed Vault
• Each packet consisting of an average of 500 seeds.
• (−)18°C temperature is required for optimal storage of the seeds.
• The seeds are sealed in custom-made three-ply foil packages
• These are sealed inside boxes
• These are stored on shelves inside the Seed Vault.
• The low temperature (permafrost) and moisture levels inside the Seed Vault ensure low metabolic activity which keeps the seeds viable for long periods of time.

Sources:

ddnews