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Seed Bank in the Arctic

04.09.2007

An international seed bank for agricultural crops is being created in Svalbard, with a capacity of three million seed samples.

The diversity of crop varieties is declining all the time. For example, in the United States in 1903, more than 8000 varieties and varieties of cultivated plants were grown, and in 1983 - only 600. Such a reduction in the range means that the unexpected appearance of a pathogen or pest that has adapted to the most common varieties can completely deprive humanity of one or more a different culture.

There are currently about 1400 seed vaults in the world, but many of them are unreliable - under the threat of natural disasters, domestic riots, wars or mismanagement. Despite global warming, the authors of the project expect that in the Arctic cold (the temperature in the storage chambers will be maintained at -18 degrees Celsius), the seeds will not lose their germination capacity for at least two centuries.

The Svalbard collection will become an inviolable reserve of mankind. All cultivated plants of the planet together with their wild relatives will be stored here. Seeds from storage will be released for sowing and propagation only as a last resort, when all other sources of such seeds are exhausted or destroyed.

Construction should be completed before the end of 2007, it will cost $75 million; funds provided by the government of Norway. In a mountain at an altitude of 130 meters above sea level (this mountain will not be flooded, even if all the ice of Antarctica and Greenland melts), two chambers are created, connected by a tunnel.

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