Inside the doomsday seed vault

[Boondock]

Very cool story from CNN about an emergency seed vault in case of a massive environmental catastrophe:

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/23/europ ... index.html

[Stercutus]

Thanks for posting that. I have seen articles on that before but never with a video or as much detail.

I can't imagine that would be enough seeds to prevent a world wide famine if it were the only source but serving as back up of sorts would be better than nothing.

[Sun Yeti]

It's not supposed to be enough seeds to replant the world's agricultural land.

It's an insurance policy against loss of genetic diversity. If a particular food crop is wiped out by war or natural disaster or whatever, at least there are some seeds in the vault, which keeps that crop from going extinct and from which we can breed back a viable population. Or if a crop is being effected by a blight, we have some unexposed seeds from which to breed a resistant variety. All in all an extremely sensible idea. There are about a dozen seed banks around the world, but this is the only one that would be OK for decades without any human maintenance. After a collapse of civilization and rebuilding, the next civilization could go to Svalbard and get seeds of the crops that went extinct out in the world during the chaos, instead of having to turn the clock back 10,000 years to start breeding them from wild relatives. This has already been a plotline in several science fiction novels, actually.

I wish Canada and Russia would both build one too. Maybe a fourth one as an international project in some geologically stable part of Antarctica. But, that's pure blue sky. Given how resistant most people are to spending money on any contingency planning, never mind for events that dire, I'm amazed that anyone was able to get funding to even build one of these.

[Stercutus]

That is good point. All the eggs are still in one basket. I'd hate to have something wiped out only to find that the seeds in the vault all become moldy and contaminated.

[ratamahatta]

What if the issue isn't with the seeds, but with the soil, would that be considered blight?

[ineffableone]

There are actually multiple other seed banks all around the world. The Svalbard seed bank is actually more the back up to those back ups. Most seed banks of the world store a portion of their seed stock at Svalbard as a back up in case their seeds are lost.

Earlier this month, seeds stored inside the so-called "Doomsday Vault" were withdrawn for the first time -- as a result of the Syrian civil war.

Svalbard gets all the press, but the reality is there are a lot of seed banks. They just aren't giant bunker looking buildings built into permafrost. They are not only storing seeds, but actually growing them and restocking the supplies and selling off the extra. Pretty much any seed supplier you find out there online has a large seed bank of many varieties of seed. There are also many companies who maintain seed banks, as well as private citizens.

BTW, there are also a lot of seed libraries. Where heritage seeds are "loaned" to gardeners at no to low cost, who then restock the seeds when they gather seeds at harvest. Though there sadly is a lot of problems with government regulations trying to block seed libraries, and many have had to make them private clubs to get around legislation.

*edit to add, here is a link to an article about 8 of the world seed banks including Svalbard http://weburbanist.com/2015/05/21/life- ... -future/2/

One the biggest for the US, is SSE in Iowa. http://www.seedsavers.org/Preservation/ ... servation/ who has submitted seeds to Svalbard, but also maintains seeds in their own facility as well as offers seeds to the public.

There is also the USDA Seed Bank in Fort Collins, CO http://www.ars.usda.gov/main/site_main. ... 0-12-05-00