8/24/2023 0 Comments Inside norway doomsday vault![]() The idea for the Arctic seed bank dates to the 1980s but only became a possibility after the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources came into force in 2004, the Norwegian government said. "We must give ourselves every option in the future to use the whole array of plant diversity that is available to us," Smith told CNN. Paul Smith, the leader of the Millennium Seed Bank project, said preserving the seeds of wild plants is just as important as preserving the seeds of vital crops. The British vault, called the Millennium Seed Bank, is part of an scientific project that works with wild plants, as opposed to the seeds of crops. The vault at Svalbard is similar to an existing seed bank in Sussex, England, about an hour outside London. Workers used a refrigeration system to bring the vault to -18 degrees Celsius (just below 0 degrees Fahrenheit), and a smaller refrigeration system plus the area's natural permafrost and the mountain's thick rock will keep the vault at at least -4 C (25 F). The vault sits at the end of a 120-meter (131-yard) tunnel blasted inside the mountain. "We believe the design of the facility will ensure that the seeds will stay well-preserved even if such forces as global warming raise temperatures outside the facility," said Magnus Bredeli Tveiten, project manager for the Norwegian government. The vault's location deep inside a mountain in the frozen north ensures the seeds can be stored safely no matter what happens outside. "At these temperatures, seeds for important crops like wheat, barley and peas can last for up to 10,000 years." "The seed vault is the perfect place for keeping seeds safe for centuries," said Cary Fowler, executive director of the trust. The United Nations founded the trust in 2004 to support the long-term conservation of crop diversity, and countries and foundations provide the funding. The Norwegian government paid to build the vault in a mountainside near Longyearbyen, in the remote Svalbard islands between Norway and the North Pole. Watch as "Doomsday" seed vault opens »Įventually the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, as it is officially known, will hold as many as 4.5 million distinct samples of seeds - or some 2 billion seeds in total - encompassing almost every variety of most important food crops in the world, the Global Crop Diversity Trust said. The shipment amounts to a 100 million seeds in total, ranging from major African and Asian food staples like maize, rice, and wheat to European and South American varieties of eggplant, lettuce, barley, and potato, according to the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which is paying to collect and maintain the seeds. In all, the shipment of seeds secured in the vault Tuesday weighed approximately 10 tons, filling 676 boxes. The inaugural shipment represent 268,000 distinct samples of seeds, with each sample containing a hundred-plus seeds and originating from a different farm or field around the world. Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan environmental and political activist who won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, placed the first seeds inside the vault, followed by other dignitaries. Norwegian musicians performed Tuesday as part of an elaborate opening ceremony marking the opening of the vault, located 130 meters (427 feet) inside a frozen mountain. to store their seeds in the vault.LONGYEARBYEN, Norway (CNN) - A vast underground vault storing millions of seeds from around the world took delivery of its first shipment Tuesday.ĭubbed the "Doomsday Vault," the seed bank on a remote island near the Arctic Ocean is considered the ultimate safety net for the world's seed collections, protecting them from a wide range of threats including war, natural disasters, lack of funding or simply poor agricultural management. The Cherokee Nation will be the first indigenous tribe in the U.S. The seeds are all culturally significant to the tribe and predate European settlement in North America. This is where the Cherokee Nation is storing nine of their traditional, heirloom seeds: Cherokee White Eagle Corn, Cherokee Long Greasy Beans, Cherokee Trail of Tears Beans, Cherokee Turkey Gizzard black and brown beans, Cherokee Candy Roaster Squash, and a few other corn varieties. This is where hundreds of thousands of seeds have been donated, preserved, and stored in a cold vault that's buried in permafrost, where it can hopefully stay frozen for at least 200 years in the event of a power outage. It's called the Svalbard Global Seed Vault - a metal fortress, embedded 400 feet into a mountain, that lies on an island halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole. There's a 'doomsday vault' out in Norway, where nearly a million seeds have been stored in case of an apocalyptic event like nuclear war, irreversible climate change, or any other extreme disasters we can't foresee.
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