Getting your player ready...
OSLO — Two years after receiving its first deposits, a “doomsday” seed vault on an Arctic island in Norway has amassed half a million seed samples, making it the world’s most diverse repository of crop seeds, the vault’s operators announced today.
Cary Fowler — who heads the trust that oversees the seed collection, which is 620 miles from the North Pole — said the facility houses at least one-third of the world’s crop seeds.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a safeguard against wars or natural disasters wiping out food crops around the globe. It was opened in 2008 as a master backup to the world’s other 1,400 seed banks, in case their deposits are lost.
