'Doomsday' Seed Bank Receives First Deposits

Construction of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is nearly complete on a remote Norwegian Arctic island.

Seeds from more than 200,000 varieties of crops from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America have just been placed in a storage facility on a remote island near the Arctic Circle, where they will be stored in case a manmade or natural disaster destroys agriculture.

Various types of rice, wheat, beans, sorghum, sweet potatoes, lentils, chick peas and a host of other plants will be stored at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which is capable of preserving their vitality for thousands of years.

These first deposits from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) collections contain duplicates from international agricultural research centers based in Benin, Colombia, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, the Philippines and Syria.

Collectively, the CGIAR centers maintain 600,000 plant varieties in crop gene banks, which are widely viewed as the foundation of global efforts to conserve agricultural biodiversity.

The doomsday vault, built by Norway as a service to the global community, will officially open on Feb. 26.

The facility is designed to be able to replenish other gene banks around the world if they are hit by catastrophe.

Photo: Mari Tefre - Global Crop Diversity Trust

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