The Seed Vault (Seedbank) at Svalbard
The Global Seed Vault, located in the Arctic Circle on the Norwegian island of Svalbard, is the highly secured World Seed Bank. The Seed Vault operating since 2008 was not accidentally built on Svalbard. The permafrost (the always frozen soil under the surface layer) is basically ideal for storing precious seeds, because even if artificial cooling fails, the storage temperature remains far below zero.
Countries ravaged by war, epidemic, famine, disease, natural disaster, or the consequences of climate change can go to the World Seeds Bank to recover their lost seeds. Syria was the first country in the world to call on the seed bank in 2016.
The Seed Vault has the capacity to store 4.5 million varieties of crops. Each variant contains an average of 500 seeds so that up to 2.5 billion seeds can be stored in the Vault. Currently, the Vault owns more than 930,000 samples from almost every country in the world. Ranging from the main basic crops such as African and Asian rice, but also corn, rice, wheat and sorghum. There are also all possible variants of the European and South American eggplant, lettuce, barley and potato.
Only climate warming increases the temperature in Svalbard fast, which threatens to thaw permafrost in the long run and capsify the Noah Ark.
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