![]() ![]() “Plans to construct the Seed Vault started as early as the 1980s, but they didn’t have international agreement to regulate the area or to support such a huge endeavor, so things fell by the wayside. Funded by the government of Norway and operated in part by Norway, the Nordic Genetic Resources Center and the Crop Trust – an independent organization created to help support and build a global system of crop conservation – the vault was opened in 2008 and immediately started storing backup seed collections. ![]() But, because nearly any building is prone to natural disasters, human catastrophes or other failures, they needed a backup location to protect seed duplicates if the worst-case scenario were ever to become reality.Įnter the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. More than 1,700 genebanks – many of which have been operating for decades – hold seed collections for safekeeping. The treaty lays the groundwork for not only conserving crop diversity, but for making seeds available for agricultural use. The world decided to address seed extinction in 2004, when the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture was established. What happens to those unused plant species when farmers stop planting them? They fall out of use and, eventually, become extinct. Hidden deep in the permanently frozen mountainscape of the world’s northernmost inhabited place, lies the ultimate agricultural failsafe for cities and populations around the globe: a remote vault with the capacity to store billions of seeds.Ī sharp decline in seed biodiversity – largely due to the fact that three-quarters of the world’s food supply comes from just 12 plant species, including major staples like rice, wheat and maize – has made preservation of seed and crop diversity more important than ever. ![]()
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