Date published: 2006/06/19
The BBC says:
Norway is starting construction on a "doomsday vault" in the Arctic which is designed to house all known varieties of the world's crops.
Dug into a frozen mountainside on the island of Svalbard, it is hoped the project will safeguard crop diversity in the event of a global catastrophe.
More than 100 countries have backed the vault, which will store seeds, packaged in foil, at sub-zero temperatures.
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Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told the Norwegian news agency NTB: "The vault is of international importance. It will be the only one of its kind; all the other gene banks are of a commercial nature."
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At temperatures of minus 18C (minus 0.4F), the seeds could last hundreds, even thousands, of years. Even if all cooling systems failed, explained Mr Riis-Johansen, the temperature in the frozen mountain would never rise above freezing due to the permafrost on the mountainside.The Global Crop Diversity Trust, founded in 2004, will help run the vault, which is planned to open and start accepting seeds from around the world in September 2007. The bank is eventually expected to house some three million seeds.
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While Norway will own the vault itself, countries sending seeds will own the material they deposit - much as with a bank safe-deposit box. The Global Crop Diversity Trust will help developing countries pay the cost of preparing and sending seeds.
Norway does something useful for the world. Ideally it will not be needed (often) for the intended purpose, but it should also allow researchers in future to compare seeds from different eras.
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