![]() ![]() “The seed vault is the backup in the global system of conservation to secure food security on Earth,” Stefan Schmitz, executive director of the Crop Trust, the Bonn-based organization which manages the vault, told Reuters. Television crews stand outside the Global Seed Vault before the opening ceremony in Longyearbyen in the Arctic, February 26, 2008. The world once cultivated around 7,000 different plants but experts say we now get about 60 percent of our calories from three main crops - maize, wheat and rice - making food supplies vulnerable if climate change causes harvests to fail. ![]() The vault also serves as a backup for plant breeders to develop new varieties of crops. The Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew in Britain will bank seeds harvested from the meadows of Prince Charles’ private residence, Highgrove, including from grass species, clovers and broad-leaved flowering herbs. On Tuesday, 30 gene banks were set to deposit seeds, including from India, Mali, Peru and the Cherokee Nation in the United States, which will bank samples of maize, beans and squash. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, built in 2008, was designed as a storage facility to protect vital crop seeds against the worst cataclysms of nuclear war or disease and safeguard global food supplies.ĭubbed the “doomsday vault,” the facility is built into a mountainside on the island of Spitsbergen in the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, halfway between Norway and the North Pole, and is only opened a few times a year in order to preserve the seeds inside. OSLO - A vault in the Arctic built to preserve seeds for rice, wheat and other food staples will contain 1 million varieties with the addition on Tuesday of specimens grown by the Cherokee Nation and the estate of Britain’s Prince Charles. A guard stands watch outside the Global Seed Vault before the opening ceremony in Longyearbyen in the Arctic, February 26, 2008. ![]()
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