The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is situated within the depths of a mountain on Svalbard, an isolated Arctic island in a Norwegian archipelago. It is the northernmost location where commercial planes operate. The vault possesses the capability to accommodate a vast collection of up to 4.5 billion seeds. It is a crucial repository for millions of seed samples vital to global agriculture as a global insurance policy to protect crop diversity.

The physical facility, situated in permafrost, comprises three vault rooms at the end of a 125-meter tunnel. Despite concerns about global warming or civil strife, the site's depth and altitude provide stability, and its remote yet accessible location in Svalbard ensures safety and functionality. For instance, there are more than 1700 gene banks worldwide including The Svalbard Global Seed Vault. In those facilities, the temperature is kept at -18C on average. This can be affected due to power outages. Even under such an emergency, the permafrost and mountain of Svalbard can keep the temperature below freezing and can protect the seeds.

In the last five decades, agricultural practices have undergone substantial transformations especially due to technological progress enabling large-scale crop production. Despite the increase in crop yields, there has been a significant decline in biodiversity, leading to a scenario where merely around 30 crops fulfill 95% of human food-energy requirements. For instance, China, which utilized a broader range of rice varieties in the 1950s, now relies on only 10% of those varieties. Similarly, the United States has experienced a staggering loss of over 90% of its fruit and vegetable varieties since the 1900s. This shift towards monoculture in agriculture renders food supplies more vulnerable to threats like diseases and drought. The seeds housed within the vault's deep freeze encompass wild and old varieties, many of which have fallen out of common use. Moreover, numerous varieties are exclusive to the seed collections from which they originated. Yet, the genetic diversity preserved in the vault holds the potential to supply essential DNA traits for developing new strains that can confront future challenges, be they global or specific to a particular region. For instance, one of the 200,000 rice varieties stored could carry the trait necessary to adapt rice to higher temperatures or confer resistance to a novel pest or disease. Such genetic diversity becomes increasingly crucial in the face of the challenges posed by climate change.

The vault's remoteness and security away from civil strife ensures the safety of the seeds which are invaluable for scientific research, education, species preservation, and safeguarding Indigenous cultures.

Sources:

www.seedvault.no

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is carved into a hillside above Longyearbyen airport, 130 meters above sea level.

https://www.seedvault.no/about/the-facility/

https://www.croptrust.org/work/svalbard-global-seed-vault/

https://phys.org/.../2018-02-noah-ark-seed-vault-chalks....

https://time.com/doomsday-vault/

Images owned by

Crop Trust, The Svalbard Global Seed Vault

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