Reuters: Svalbard’s doomsday vault gets record batch of global crop seeds
28 February 2024
Terje Solsvik reports on the recent deposit to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault for Reuters:
A frozen Arctic vault built to preserve global agricultural crops from extinction received seeds on Tuesday from the largest number of new contributors yet, a custodian of the remote facility said.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, set in permafrost caves on an island halfway between mainland Europe and the North Pole, was launched in 2008 as the ultimate backup for the world's gene banks to protect plants from war, disease and climate change.
The vault has received samples from across the world, and played an essential role between 2015 and 2019 in rebuilding seed collections damaged during the war in Syria.
On Tuesday, depositors carried crates of seeds into the vault's entrance, a long narrow structure which juts out of the snow-covered hillside.
Twenty-three seed banks took part, nine of them for the first time, the largest number of newcomers introduced at one single occasion, according to Crop Trust, a non-profit that operates the facility along with Norwegian authorities.