![]() Nobody has access to anyone else’s seeds from the see vault. The Government of Norway owns the facility, but the depositing banks own the seeds they send.Įach depositor signs a Deposit Agreement, making it clear that Norway does not claim ownership over the deposited samples and that ownership remains with the depositor. The bank owns the building and the depositor owns the contents of his/hers box. The seed vault functions like a safe deposit box in a bank. Instead, they must request samples from the depositing genebanks. Researchers, plant breeders, and groups looking to access seeds samples cannot do so through the seed vault. For example, war and civil strife have a history of destroying some genebanks, and that is when the vault could come in handy.Īccess to seeds is another popular topic. While media classifies as the “doomsday safety net”, the vault will actually has usage when genebanks lose samples due to mismanagement, accident, funding cuts, natural disasters, and equipment failures. The mission of the vault is to provide a safety net against accidental loss of diversity in traditional genebanks. The Nordic Genetic Resource Center manages the facility, but there is no permanent staff on-site. Seeds are packaged in special three-ply foil packets and heat sealed to exclude moisture. There is a special security system that prevents access to 99.99999% of the world’s population. The seed vault is actually 390ft object inside a sandstone mountain on Spitsbergen Island. In 2017, the vault stored close to 1 million samples of seeds, representing 13,000 years of agricultural history. That brought the total number of seed samples to 400,000 at the moment.īy 2013, estimates were that one third of the genera diversity stored in gene banks globally was represented at the Seed Vault. On the first anniversary of the vault, 90,000 food crop seed samples were placed into storage. The first seeds actually arrived in January the same year. The result was Svalbard Global Seed Vault which was opened on 26 February, 2008. In 2008, the bank merged with two other Nordic conservation groups to form NordGen. They do it via frozen seeds in an abandoned coal mine. The Nordic Gene Bank stores backup Nordic plants since 1984. Located on the Norwegian Island of Spitsbergen, the vault actually has a long history. ![]() The fun fact is not even countries that have lend seeds are allowed access to the site. A catastrophic environmental disaster if you like, the vault stores seeds that can help us restore life. The vault was constructed to store the seeds that could be utilized in a doomsday scenario. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is one of those insanely cool places on Earth you cannot visit.
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