CIAT at Svalbard

CIAT at Svalbard
The International Centre for Tropical Agriculture
and the Svalbard Global Seed Vault
2 March 2008
1
Contents
1. Background
2
2. The genetic resources collections in-trust at CIAT
3
3. The distribution of germplasm by CIAT GRU
3
4. The safety back-ups
4
5. The process leading to Svalbard
5
6. The way ahead
10
7. Acknowledgments
11
8. The event in some media
12
2
1. Background
The International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (known as CIAT, its acronym for
Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical) is a member of the Consultative Group for
International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). It was established in 1967 in Palmira, in
the department of Valle del Cauca, Colombia, as a non-profit agricultural research
institution to increase food crop productivity in the tropics.
The period 1968-1973 was a time of intense activity in Palmira, not only for the physical
establishment of CIAT itself (figure below), but also for the definition of the programmes
of work. After a series of international conferences, and consultations with agricultural
ministries, development agencies and experts, CIAT decided to increase food availability
and quality for the peoples in the tropics working on four crop commodities: beans,
cassava, tropical forages, and rice. The latter was a regional mandate for Latin America,
while the mandate was global for the former three. These staple food crops were – and
continue to be - critical for the daily supply of carbohydrates and proteins in the diet of
millions of poor people in both rural and urban areas of Latin America, Africa and South
Asia.
There are many ways to increase crop productivity; CIAT decided to produce a series of
technological packages based on improved varieties and to train the National Agricultural
Research Systems (NARS) and farmers to adopt such packages. These staple food crops
were behind in yield and adaptation as compared to cereals, particularly temperate
cereals. The breeding strategy was two-fold: by securing first the harvest through
multiple resistances to diseases and pests, and through tolerance to drought and acid, low
fertility soils, and by increasing yield and adaptation. This strategy was eventually going
to work – as it has worked for the temperate crops – if it was possible to identify and
combine useful traits from the immense variability existing in these staple food crops.
Two steps were then of critical importance to make progress: to assemble diverse (large)
collections, and to evaluate them for all traits identified by plant breeders and
agronomists.
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2. The genetic resources collections in-trust at CIAT
Once crop diversity was acknowledged as critical to genetic progress and hence stronger
agricultural systems and higher food availability, CIAT started assembling large genetic
resources collections, and established in 1978 the Genetic Resources Unit (GRU) to host
them. The collections were obtained initially through exchanges and donations from
different gene banks around the world, and then enlarged through specific germplasm
explorations with the support among others of the International Board for Plant Genetic
Resources (IBPGR). These explorations were essential because if some genetic
collections existed for beans, namely in temperate countries (because of the interest for
snap beans), few collections existed for cassava and the tropical forages. These
explorations were carried out with scientists of the NARS in areas of diversity, mainly in
tropical America. After thirty years of work the genetic resources collections at CIAT are
the most diverse and largest ones in the world for their kind (Table 1).
Table 1. Number of accessions for the three groups of crops maintained by CIAT
GRU (figures by December 2007).
Crop commodity
Phaseolus beans
Manihot cassava
Tropical forages
Total
Rank
1
1
1
Number of taxa
44
33
728
805
Number of accessions
35,683
6,467
23,140
65,290
On 16 October 2006, CIAT signed an agreement with the Governing Body of the
International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, by which it
made a specific commitment to keep the genetic resources collections in-trust for the
progress of agricultural research worldwide. The collections are maintained first because
in many cases this biological heritage no longer exists in farmers’ fields or in natural
vegetations. The collections are also maintained in order to provide users at anytime with
samples with known characteristics, free of diseases and of optimal viability. The
collections are part of the biological heritage of 141 countries.
3. The distribution of germplasm by CIAT GRU
CIAT through its GRU has distributed many samples of the genetic collections
maintained in trust (Figure 1). All in all, the GRU has distributed eleven times the bean
collection, four times the cassava collection, and almost four times the collection of
tropical forages. There are several reasons for the high level of distribution: the
commodity programmes of CIAT have undertaken an evaluation work to a level
unmatched in history. Collaborators have used the recently identified sources of useful
traits in additional breeding programmes. Often for some species for farmers and for
university departments the only source is CIAT GRU. Since the beginning of its
operations, the GRU has distributed 517,916 samples to institutions and farmers of 136
countries.
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A service to the world agricultural development
Distribution of germplasm samples by CIAT-GRU
(period 1973 - 2007)
517,916 samples to 136 different countries
cassava : 30,847 (6%) or 4.4 x
84,012 (16%) or 3.6 x
forages :
beans
cassava
forages
beans : 403,057 (78%) or 11 x
source: CIAT - GRU, 2008
Figure 1. Distribution of samples of the three genetic collections.
4. The safety back-ups
It is normal procedure for genebanks to make safety back-ups. CIAT GRU systematically
makes copies for the country of origin, one for CIMMYT and one for Svalbard. In 2004,
CIAT and the Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo (CIMMYT) in
Mexico signed a specific agreement in order to maintain a copy of its seed collections at
its headquarters at El Batán, close to Texcoco, Mexico. In 2005, CIAT and the Centro
Internacional de la Papa (CIP) signed a specific agreement in order to maintain a copy of
its cassava collection maintained under slow growth in vitro. In 2007, CIAT and the
Ministry of Agriculture and Food of the Royal Government of Norway signed a specific
agreement in order to maintain a copy of its seed collections in the Svalbard Global Seed
Vault close to Longyearbyen, Spitzberg, Norway. With the first shipment to Svalbard,
collections from 124 countries are safely duplicated there. The status of safety duplication
can be seen in Table 2.
Table 2. Status of safety duplication (figures as by February 2008).
Phaseolus beans
Manihot cassava
Tropical forages
CIMMYT
14,140 (40%)
--7,118 (31%)
21,258 (36%)
CIP
--5,014 (77%)
--5,014 (77%)
Svalbard
21,698 (61%)
9,213 (40%)
30,911 (52.5%)
(% on number of accessions in the main collection maintained by GRU in CIAT HQ).
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CIMMYT and the Svalbard Vault act as long-term deposits: they offer on a continuing
basis the technical infrastructure of shelving at low temperature, and they organize the
different shipments in numerical sequence. Because the viability of the accessions is
monitored on the same seed lots by the GRU in Palmira, if there is any need, both
CIMMYT and the Svalbard Vault can store a replacement sample. The older sample is
sent back to Palmira for any future study. At CIP the cassava collection is maintained
under slow growth in vitro; it is periodically replaced as the plantlets are reaching the top
of the test tubes or have exhausted the growing media. These safety back-ups do not
imply any transfer of legal ownership, and the collections remain the property of the
countries when known.
5. The process leading to Svalbard
The possibility of sending seed to Svalbard actually materialized with the assembling of
the first bean collections in 1973 with donations of bean germplasm by the Departamento
de Investigaciones Agrícolas (Palmira Station) of the Ministry of Agriculture of
Colombia, and the Department of Agriculture of the United States of America (USDA
Pullman Station). In the case of explorations, the starting point was often a single seed
rescued from a farmer’s mixture, and that seed needed careful multiplication (Fig. 2).
Once seeds have been multiplied, they are tested for physical purity (Fig. 3),
physiological quality (Fig. 4), and absence of diseases of quarantine importance (Fig. 5).
After a third cycle of drying (Fig. 6), the seeds are packed in such as way to prevent
moisture to get back in (Fig. 7), and maintained under low temperatures (Fig. 8).
Subsamples have been prepared for long-term conservation in Palmira, viability testing,
future distribution, and safety duplication. From 1996 onwards, GRU prepared
systematically samples for safety duplication with view of celebrating specific
institutional agreements to that end. In 2003, thanks to the support of the World Bank, in
the framework of an activity of the System-wide Genetic Resources Programme (SGRP),
the GRU increased the rate of multiplication of accessions with low seed availability.
Figure 2. Seed multiplication
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Figure 3. Seed testing for physical purity.
Figure 4. Viability testing.
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Figure 5. Germplasm health.
Figure 6. Drying of seeds.
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Figure 7. Packing of seeds.
Figure 8. Long-term conservation at – 18oC in GRU cold room.
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Figure 9. Special boxes for the long-term conservation in Svalbard.
Figure 10. Plastic aluminium pouches orderly placed in the boxes.
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Figure 11. The shipment ready to go.
Special boxes for Svalbard arrived in late November (Fig. 9), and the samples were
progressively packed in 93 boxes (Fig. 10). On January 30, 2008, the GRU sent 30,911
samples to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (Fig. 11).
6. The way ahead
Continue with the safety duplication. The shipment of 30,911 samples of the genetic
collections maintained in-trust by CIAT means a safety back-up for 52% of the seed
collections. The remaining 48% will be sent in the coming years (the last shipment is
planned for 2013).
Continue with exploration. The size of the genetic collections may look impressive. Yet
it is far from being fully representative of the genetic diversity existing in these groups of
crops. While the common bean is relatively well represented, particularly the varieties
that have been commercialized, the Lima bean, a hardy crop of the tropics, has yet up to
half of its genetic diversity to be sampled and conserved. The Southwestern corner of the
homeland of cassava could be represented by far more accessions than those already
maintained ex situ.
Advance research. There is a cost associated with the conservation of each item of the
genetic resources collections. The priority in research is thus two-fold: (i) understanding
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the physiological processes of seed aging so that seed longevity can be increased, thus
reducing the needs for frequent regenerations. (ii) understanding the structure of genetic
diversity in order to make sure that each accession conserved is a unique item
representative of the genetic diversity existing in the species, so that farmers and breeders
will find the trait they need.
Participate in education. The effort of collecting, studying and conserving crop genetic
resources is not restricted to beans, cassava and tropical forages, but should be carried out
on the entire world crop heritage. For several reasons this effort should be international,
and capacity building and public awareness and education are the cornerstone of its
success and sustainability. CIAT, Bioversity, other Centers, sometimes in the framework
of SGRP, have organized several training activities, developed training and public
awareness products, or interacted with the media, with the objective of raising knowledge
and sense of responsibility towards the conservation of the ‘future harvest’.
7. Acknowledgments
Many individuals, namely of the CIAT commodity programmes, the Communication
Unit, and GRU, and many institutions throughout the world from 1973 to 2008 have
made the shipment of 30,911 samples to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault possible, and it
will be impossible to mention them all here. We would like to mention the superb help of
the following institutions over the last eight months.
Dirección de Impuestos y Aduanas Nacionales de Colombia
The European Union
Global Crop Diversity Trust
Ministerio de Agricultura y Desarrollo Rural de Colombia
Instituto Colombiano Agropecuario
Policía Nacional de Colombia
System-wide Genetic Resources Programme
The United States Agency for International Development
The World Bank
Further information:
Dr. Ir Daniel G. Debouck
Head, Genetic Resources Unit, CIAT
Email: [email protected]
Last update:
2 March 2008
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8. The event in some media
Advertising media about the shipment of seeds to the Svalbard Global Vault by CIAT in
Colombia.
Print and electronic media
Colombia almacenará 30 mil copias de semillas en el banco de germoplasma más
grande del mundo
In: El Tiempo (Colombia)
http://www.eltiempo.com/economia/tierrasyganados/2008-01-26/ARTICULO-WEBNOTA_INTERIOR-3933380.html
Colombia almacenará 30 mil copias de semillas en el banco de germoplasma más
grande del mundo
In: World Press (agencia internacional)
http://siemprerebelde.wordpress.com/2008/01/27/colombia-almacenara-30-mil-copiasde-semillas-en-el-banco-de-germoplasma-mas-grande-del-mundo/
http://es.wordpress.com/tag/boveda-global-de-semillas/
La bóveda ártica guardará nuestro más caro tesoro
In: El Colombiano (Colombia)
http://www.elcolombiano.com.co/BancoConocimiento/L/la_boveda_artica_guardara_nue
stro_mas_caro_tesoro/la_boveda_artica_guardara_nuestro_mas_caro_tesoro.asp
Arca de Noé Vegetal con sabor colombiano
In: El País (Colombia)
http://www.elpais.com.co/paisonline/notas/Enero302008/reg01.html
Guardan semillas del CIAT para la posteridad
In: Portafolio (Colombia)
http://www.portafolio.com.co/port_secc_online/porta_domi_online/2008-0123/ARTICULO-WEB-NOTA_INTERIOR_PORTA-3758989.html
Semillas colombianas serán guardadas en Noruega para bien de la humanidad
In: Financiero.com (Guatemala)
http://www.financiero.com/agricultura/semillas-colombianas-seran-guardadas-noruegapara-bien-humanidad.asp
Semillas colombianas serán guardadas en Noruega para bien de la humanidad
In: Prodigy (Portal MSN)
http://tecnologia.prodigy.msn.com/LandinTech/landingpage.aspx?cpdocumentid=6066647
13
Desde Colombia también salen Semillas de Cultivos Básicos para protegerlos en una
Bóveda en el Polo Norte
In: Portal de la Red de Desarrollo Sostenible de Colombia
http://www.rds.org.co/oficina.htm?x=1057567
Colombia almacenará 30 mil copias de semillas en El Banco De Germoplasma más
grande del mundo
In: Opinión Caribe (Portal de la Costa Caribe de Colombia)
http://www.opinioncaribe.com/?ac=noticias&id=1599
Semillas colombianas van a Noruega
In: El Nuevo Día (Colombia)
http://www.elnuevodia.com.co/dia/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=
4112&Itemid=55
Semillas colombianas serán guardadas en Noruega para bien de la humanidad
In: Prensa Libre (Guatemala)
http://www.prensalibre.com/pl/2008/enero/23/080122205215.q9zrcq7g.html
De Colombia llega un barco cargado de...
In: Agencia de Noticias de Ciencia y Tecnología de Colombia
http://www.noticyt.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=72&Itemid
=76
Enviarán frijoles al “arca” de semillas en el Ártico
In: La Prensa (Nicaragua)
http://www.laprensa.com.ni/archivo/2008/febrero/04/noticias/campoyagro/
La Bóveda Ártica del Fin del Mundo
In: La Tarde (Pereira)
www.latarde.com/2008/sema/6/neg.htm
Radio: Amplio cubrimiento por las principales emisoras de Colombia y algunas de
América Latina, con entrevistas en directo.
Televisión:
Despliegue por el noticiero Noti5, con amplía sintonía en el occidente colombiano.
Nota especial por el Canal RCN de Colombia.
Nota especial por Telepacífico.
14
15
25 de enero al 8 de febrero de 2008
Edición 92
Informe Especial
Guardan duplicados de germoplasma
del CIAT en el Polo Norte
El CIAT es protagonista de primer orden de uno de los
proyectos más ambiciosos del mundo, en el que se busca
preservar de cualquier catástrofe el patrimonio agrícola
de la humanidad, mediante una bóveda construida en un
remoto lugar del Ártico.
Conocido como la Bóveda Global de Semillas, la Bóveda
Ártica del Fin del Mundo o el Arca de Noé Vegetal, este
Ampliar
gigantesco depósito ubicado en las entrañas de una
montaña del archipiélago de Svalbard, en Noruega,
tendrá una capacidad para almacenar hasta 4.5 millones de duplicados de semillas, es
decir, que albergará prácticamente todas las variedades de casi todos los cultivos
alimentarios importantes del mundo (Ver nota).
El objetivo principal de este proyecto es garantizar a la humanidad la producción
alimentaria durante muchos siglos, si ésta se viera amenazada por una catástrofe
regional o mundial.
Cultivos tan ancestrales como el arroz, el trigo, la cebada, el fríjol, el sorgo, la lenteja, el
maíz, entre muchos otros alimentos, junto con plantas forrajeras y agroforestales, se
protegerán en dicha bóveda, cuya temperatura será de -18 grados centígrados, a 10
metros de profundidad de la arenisca que rodea el depósito y al final de un túnel de 120
metros.
Las semillas serán despachadas a finales de enero desde
distintos puntos del planeta a la aldea de Longyearbyen,
en la isla de Spitsbergen, archipiélago de Svalbard. La
inauguración oficial de la bóveda está provista para el 26
de febrero. La fortaleza polar fue construida por el
gobierno de Noruega como un servicio a la comunidad
mundial, y su operación será financiada por el Fondo
Mundial para la Diversidad de Cultivos, una ONG
internacional con sede en Roma.
Ampliar
Colombia está representada por el CIAT que, junto con
los demás centros que forman parte del Grupo Consultivo para la Investigación Agrícola
Internacional (CGIAR), enviarán más de 200 mil duplicados de variedades de cultivos de
Asia, África, América Latina y el Oriente Medio, que se conservan en sus bancos de
16
germoplasma.
Estas colecciones son consideradas como un tesoro entre los círculos científicos, pues les
permiten a los fitomejoradores crear nuevas variedades con mayores rendimientos, más
valor nutritivo, resistencia a plagas y enfermedades, y con capacidad para sobrevivir en
condiciones climáticas variables.
En el caso del CIAT, en su banco de germoplasma se
protegen más de 65 mil accesiones de fríjol, yuca y
forrajes tropicales, y es la colección más grande del
mundo. Algunos de estos cultivos ya están extinguidos
en sus lugares de origen.
El apoyo que la Unidad de Recursos Genéticos del CIAT
ha brindado a científicos y agricultores de los cinco
continentes, en 4 décadas, se mide en el número de
materiales distribuidos: más de 500 mil. Asimismo, ha
sido determinante en campañas humanitarias para evitar
Ampliar
hambruna de pueblos, como en el caso de la guerra civil
en Rwanda o el desastre provocado por el huracán Mitch en Honduras y Nicaragua,
donde quedaron devastados los campos de fríjol.
De esa colección y con miras a guardar un duplicado para la posteridad, el CIAT enviará
a Svalbard, 30,911 accesiones entre fríjol Phaseolus (21,698) y forrajes tropicales
(9,213). "Será el primero de cuatro envíos y representará un 52.7% de nuestra
colección", dijo el Dr. Daniel Debouck, director de la URG. "Prácticamente todos los
países de América Latina, con excepción de algunas islas del Caribe y las Guyanas,
tendrán su duplicado en la bóveda ártica", agregó.
Por su parte, Geoff Hawtin, Director General Interino del
CIAT y antiguo director ejecutivo del Fondo que financia
esta operación, calificó de vital este proyecto para
proteger más las colecciones de cultivos alimenticios.
"Con los cambios climáticos venideros, el alza de los
precios de los alimentos y la expansión de los mercados
para biocombustibles, nuestras mejores opciones
disponibles para el progreso, por no decir supervivencia,
estarán en lo que hemos conservado y estudiado contra
todas las predicciones imaginables", dijo.
Ampliar
El cargamento desde el CIAT saldrá embalado en 93
cajas especialmente construidas para ello, con un peso de 1,310 kilos. El itinerario será
Cali-Bogotá-Madrid-Oslo. Dos días después, y tras un vuelo especial que dura 5 horas,
este tesoro agrícola procedente de América Latina llegará a su destino final: las entrañas
del Polo Norte para garantizar la supervivencia de la humanidad.
17
25 de enero al 8 de febrero de 2008
Edición 92
Informe Especial
Una fortaleza bajo el hielo polar
La Bóveda Global de Semillas es una fortaleza construida por
el gobierno de Noruega debajo de los hielos polares en una
isla del archipiélago de Svalbard, en el Círculo Polar Ártico.
Es una mole maciza, cincelada en el interior de una montaña
y con un túnel de 120 metros en acero reforzado. Los
tesoros quedarán guardados en una bóveda a 10 metros de
profundidad, en la que hay tres cuartos fríos, de 10 por 27
metros cada uno.
El lugar es ideal porque cuenta con permafrost, un tipo de
superficie que, junto con la arenisca del lugar, ofrece
temperaturas bajas constantes, ideales para conservar la gran estructura de esta 'arca de
Noé vegetal'.
Ampliar
En su construcción básicamente los ingenieros utilizaron la roca
como una cámara frigorífica, lo cual se ha vuelto popular como
una manera de establecer sistemas de refrigeración
energéticamente eficientes. La bóveda deberá mantenerse a una
temperatura de -18 grados centígrados, tal como en el cuarto frío
a largo plazo de la Unidad de Recursos Genéticos del CIAT.
Además del permafrost natural del área, también será importante
en el proceso de refrigeración a largo plazo la nieve y el hielo que
cubre la montaña durante gran parte del año, lo cual asegura que
la roca permanezca por lo menos a -4 grados centígrados.
Ampliar
Ampliar
La iniciativa para construir esa descomunal
obra, a un costo de 8 millones de dólares, fue del Fondo Mundial para la
Diversidad de Cultivos. Su diseño comenzó en 1980, con el apoyo de
más de 100 países, pero sólo pudo empezar a concretarse en el 2001,
cuando la Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Agricultura y la
Alimentación (FAO) adoptó el Tratado Internacional sobre Recursos
Genéticos de Plantas para la Alimentación y la Agricultura. Mediante ese
acuerdo hubo vía libre para ubicar en la isla de Svalbard esta "bodega
del fin del mundo".
La meta es guardar 4.5 millones de duplicados de semillas de los cultivos alimentarios más
importantes de todo el mundo.
18
Nota del editor: Para ver más fotos relacionadas con la bóveda, visite:
http://www.croptrust.org/main/arctic.php?itemid=217>
Arriba
Arcos Digital 2007 - Ext. 3224 - Outlook: CIAT- Arcos
Realización: María Fernanda Mejía C. Colaboración: Gladys Rodríguez N.,
....................................................................... Eduardo Figueroa C.
19
8 al 22 de febrero de 2008
Edición 93
Noticias
Gracias gente de la URG
Cuando la última caja fue acomodada dentro del camión
que llevaría la preciada carga hasta el aeropuerto Alfonso
Bonilla Aragón para iniciar su largo viaje hasta el Polo
Norte, el personal de la Unidad de Recursos Genéticos
(URG) no pudo contener la emoción y todos empezaron a
aplaudir.
Últimos preparativos.
Culminaba así una tarea que comenzó en octubre de
2007 y que involucró a todo el personal de la URG, y de
la cual hoy se sienten orgullosos porque saben que ya
son parte de uno de los acontecimientos históricos de la
humanidad.
Y no es exageración. Este equipo, liderado por Daniel
Debouck y María Celia Lima, preparó duplicados de miles
de variedades de fríjol y forrajes tropicales que se
conservan en el Banco de Germoplasma del CIAT, para
enviarlos a una remota bóveda en el círculo polar ártico,
en Noruega. El objetivo: preservarlas de cualquier
catástrofe y garantizarle a las generaciones siguientes su
seguridad alimentaria.
Fue un riguroso proceso de planificación y de estricto
cumplimiento de cronogramas. La responsabilidad era
ante el mundo. Y cumplieron. Y por eso aplaudieron.
Trasteo cuidadoso.
A las 12:20 de la tarde del miércoles 30 de enero, la
carga salió del CIAT. Fueron 5 grandes cajas que
contenían 93 "cofres" especiales que albergan 30.912
accesiones entre fríjol Phaseolus (21.699) y forrajes
tropicales (9.213). Su peso total fue de 1.310 kilos. Es el
primero de cuatro envíos y representa un 52.7% de la
colección del Centro.
En la noche del martes 5 de febrero, las semillas llegaron
a Oslo, la capital de Noruega, y este viernes 8 saldrán
Esfuerzo colectivo.
rumbo a la aldea de Longyearbyen, en la isla de
Spitsbergen, archipiélago de Svalbard, donde está la
Bóveda Global de Semillas o el Arca de Noé Vegetal. La inauguración oficial de la bóveda
está provista para el 26 de febrero.
20
La misión se cumplió a cabalidad. El CIAT, por estos días,
ha figurado en diferentes medios de comunicación,
nacionales e internacionales. La opinión pública reconoce
que es un proyecto maravilloso. Nosotros lo sabemos, y
también sabemos que se logró porque contamos con
gente maravillosa.
Ahora somos nosotros los que aplaudimos al equipo de la
URG. Se lo merecen.
Misión cumplida.
Por Eduardo Figueroa
Información Pública
Arriba
Arcos Digital 2007 - Ext. 3224 - Outlook: CIAT- Arcos
Realización: María Fernanda Mejía C. Colaboración: Gladys Rodríguez N.,
....................................................................... Eduardo Figueroa C.
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As interesting as the numbers is the fact that the study was published in the state-run Chinese-language
Oriental Outlook magazine. Chinese authorities are touchy about religion, restricting religious practices to
constrain groups seen as potentially challenging Communist Party authority.
Building the Fort Knox of Seeds
On a remote Arctic island, not far from the North Pole, Norway is about to
start construction of a "doomsday vault" to safeguard a uniquely valuable
resource-seed samples of nearly every food crop on Earth-from a global
catastrophe such as massive crop disease, biological contamination, or
SAUDI ARABIA. King
Abdullah is flanked by
Hamas's Mashaal (left) and
Palestinian Authority
President Abbas.
SUHAIB SALEM-GETTY
IMAGES/POOL
nuclear war.
The Svalbard International Seed Vault, due to go into operation by late 2008,
is intended to hold in cold storage as many as 3 million seeds to combat the
loss of biological diversity, to reduce vulnerability of agricultural production
to climate change, and to secure future food production capability. The
Norwegian government is paying the $3 million construction cost, and there are plans for governments,
foundations, and seed companies to fund a $260 million endowment to sustain the facility in perpetuity.
While there are other seed collections, this facility is seen as the bank of last resort, the backup for the
whole world. It will be carved into a mountainside, kept cold by the natural permafrost, and secured with
fences, blastproof doors, air locks, and motion detectors. "The presence of polar bears, which prowl the
area," say organizers, "may be seen by some as providing an additional layer of security."
With Associated Press
Copyright © 2008 U.S.News & World Report, L.P. All rights reserved.
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2/26/2008
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Articles by Country Articles by Theme At the end of January, research centers in 10 countries around the world,
including Colombia, Mexico and Peru, sent thousands of seeds to the
Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway — close to the Arctic Circle — which
is part of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research
(CGIAR).
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The CGIAR, founded in 1971, comprises 15 agricultural research centers
globally, including the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT for
its initials in Spanish) in Colombia, the International Center for Maize and
Wheat Improvement (CIMMYT) in Mexico, and the International Potato
Center (CIP) in Peru.
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The project’s objective is to guarantee human food production over the next
centuries, in case of any threat by a regional or global catastrophe.
CIAT sent 31,000 varieties of bean, yucca and tropical forage, CIMMYT
sent 48,000 samples of wheat and 7,000 of maize and CIP sent 12,000
species of potato and sweet potato. These seeds are duplicates of those
already in the centers’ germplasm banks.
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Svalbard's giant cold store | Environment | guardian.co.uk
Page 1 of 2
Svalbard's giant cold store
Today sees the opening of the global seed vault, built to preserve
samples of nearly all the world's seed crops deep in an Arctic
mountain
Gwladys Fouché in Longyearbyen
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday February 26 2008
Link to this video
Hardly anything grows on Svalbard. In this Arctic archipelago, the
permafrost is 1,000ft deep, the nearest tree grows 600 miles to the south,
and the sun does not rise for four months of the year. But it is on this frozen,
barren outpost that the future of mankind's food supply depends.
Today sees the inauguration of the Svalbard global seed vault, a top-security
repository that will house batches of seeds from nearly every variety of food
crop on the planet, such as wheat, rice or maize. The aim is to protect them
in case of a global catastrophe. "It is the last line of defence against the
extinction of our agricultural diversity," says Cary Fowler, executive director
of the Global Diversity Crop Trust (GDCT), the brain behind the project.
"People are aware of the extinction of the dinosaurs, but they don't know that
we are currently experiencing a mass extinction of our crop diversity."
According to Fowler, maintaining agricultural diversity is essential to protect
our food supply. "We need [it] to help farmers and to help agriculture adapt
to climate change, pests and diseases, droughts, and whatever demands
we're going to have make of agriculture, including feeding more people."
"If we only cultivate the same variety of wheat, a disease can easily wipe it
out. It has happened before," adds the 58-year-old US scientist, pointing out
the blight that ravaged northern Europe's potato crops in the 1840s - and
contributed to the great Irish famine.
Preserving crop diversity is becoming increasingly complex with global
i
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/feb/26/food.conservation/print
2/26/2008
Svalbard's giant cold store | Environment | guardian.co.uk
Page 2 of 2
"We think we will be seeing concrete effects for which we will need new
varieties of agricultural crops within the next twenty years. We're going to
need that crop diversity more and more to be able to adapt," he says.
So to protect the planet's crops, a £4.7m refrigerated warehouse has been
built inside a mountain overlooking Longyearbyen, a mining community of
about 2,000 souls. It has been dubbed the "doomsday vault".
From the outside the vault looks like the perfect layer for a 007 villain. The
entry, a narrow triangular portal made of concrete and steel, shoots out of
the mountainside and offers spectacular views over Svalbard's snow-capped
mountains and the Arctic Sea.
Inside, a 120m reinforced concrete tunnel gently slopes into the heart of the
mountain towards three chambers, each measuring about 1,500 cubic
metres. The seeds will be stored at –18C to prevent them from germinating.
They will be contained in grey envelopes made of polyethylene and
aluminium to protect them from air and moisture. The envelopes are stored
in corrugated plastic boxes, up to 400 envelopes per box, on metal shelves.
At today's ceremony, the first 250,000 samples will be placed in the vault,
with more on their way. It is estimated there are 2-3m unique varieties of
crops in the world.
Should a variety of crop disappear, a sample could be taken out of the vault
and sent to the gene bank it belongs to. It could then be germinated - and the
crop reconstituted.
The Svalbard seed vault is not the first seed bank in the world. There are at
least 1,500 of them worldwide. But some of the existing seed banks are
vulnerable, and this is the first attempt to build a complete collection. "I
don't think there is a single seed bank in the world that is securely funded,"
reckons Fowler. "None have secure multi-year budgets. Many are located in
dangerous places in the world. All would be vulnerable to certain kinds of
standard risks, such as fire, natural disasters; that type of thing." The seed
banks in Iraq and Afghanistan, for instance, were looted and destroyed, and
most of the seed collections of the Philippines's National Plant Genetic
Resources Laboratory were obliterated during a typhoon two years ago.
A backup was needed, and this is why Svalbard was chosen. The cold keeps
the seeds at constant freezing temperature; the islands are isolated; it is far
away from the troubles of the world; instead "we have a friendly, stable and
well-respected government with Norway [which has sovereignty over
Svalbard]," reckons Fowler. "I can't think of a better location."
Norway also financed the construction of the vault. The GDCT will take
charge of the £63,000 yearly operating costs. Britain is an indirect
contributor too: it is providing £10m to the trust's overall budget between
2007 and 2011 - the largest contribution by any country.
So from today, the world's food supply should be a little safer. For Fowler,
"this is an insurance policy for the most valuable natural resource on earth".
Audio: Cary Fowler of the GDCT
Gallery: gobal seed vault
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/feb/26/food.conservation/print
2/26/2008
SeedQuest - Central information website for the global seed industry
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Svalbard not the only safe haven for crop diversity
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February 26, 2008
As the sun finally clears the horizon, signalling an end to the long winter night, the eyes of the world will be on the Global
Seed Vault, dug into the mountainside above the town of Longyearbyen in Svalbard, Norway. The first boxes of 12 tonnes a hundred million seeds - will be carried down the long tunnel to the deep freezers within, there to be kept in safety just in
case. The specimens will all be what scientists call orthodox seeds, those that can be dried and stored at low temperatures
without harm. Ironically, species that cannot be dried and stored have no place in the frozen Svalbard vault. They need
cold, but they also need regular human attention. Where will they be secure?
For some, in the sunny south of France.
The first few hundred samples of banana and plantain from the International Musa
Germplasm Collection, managed by Bioversity International and supported by the Belgian
government, have been safely delivered from the International Transit Centre (ITC) at
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium to the French Research Institute for
Development (IRD) in Montpellier, France.
The "black box" collection at IRD - in reality a large vat kept at an extremely chilly -196°C
by liquid nitrogen - represents the same kind of safety backup that Svalbard offers for
orthodox seeds. Should anything happen to the samples at Leuven, like the typhoon that
damaged the Philippine rice genebank or the looters who wiped out the genebank at Abu
Ghraib in Iraq, duplicates will be available at IRD.
"It's a mirror of the need for crop diversity itself," said Emile Frison, Director General of
Bioversity International, which is working closely with the Global Crop Diversity Trust to
secure important collections of agricultural biodiversity. "Just as humanity needs different
varieties of different crops, so different crops need different kinds of long-term storage."
Bart Panis (left) transfers to
samples to Nicolas R
Like bananas and plantains, crops such as coconut, cassava, yam, potato, sweet potato
and taro are vitally important foods that are best conserved in field genebanks and tissue
culture. But those methods are expensive, so scientists are working to develop protocols
for cryopreservation, long-term storage at very low temperatures. KULeuven is a leader in
this area and has been designated a Global Centre of Excellence on Plant Cryobiology.
The experts there have been working with the genebanks of the Consultative Group on
International Agricultural Research and others to develop cryopreservation protocols and
safety duplicates of important collections.
"The safety duplicates are at KULeuven in Belgium," Frison said. "But because the primary
banana collection is already there, we had to put the safety duplicate somewhere else."
"We chose IRD to house the black box collection because of the expertise of their
scientists in cryopreservation," said Professor Rony Swennen, Honorary Research Fellow
at Bioversity and Director of the ITC. IRD researchers made an important contribution to
cryopreservation by working out how many samples of each variety should be conserved.
"There is no guarantee that a thawed piece of plant tissue will regenerate into a fully
viable plant," Swennen explained. "IRD scientists solved that problem by developing a
method to calculate the number of samples needed to ensure a 95% chance that at least
one of them will produce a plant."
Stephane Dussert takes care of
the safety duplicate collection at
IRD.
The method is based on the survival rate of the accession, the risk level the genebank
manager is willing to accept, and the time between regenerations. Armed with this information Bart Piette and Bart Panis,
Belgian scientists at KULeuven, cryopreserved a batch of accessions three separate times, to minimise the risk that all
might be contaminated. One of each repetition has gone to France while the other two remain in Belgium.
Just as the Trust is supporting the ongoing operations of the Global Seed Vault and the preparation and shipping of seeds to
Svalbard, it is also supporting research into cryopreservation and safety backups for crops that need it. Tissue culture is
expensive and time-consuming because fresh cultures must frequently be made, while field collections are vulnerable to
environmental disasters. Research at the Global Centre of Excellence on Plant Cryobiology at KULeuven and elsewhere is
delivering improved cryopreservation protocols that enable much longer storage without the need for human interference.
"The Trust's support in making sure that crops such as banana are safely stored for the global community is very much
appreciated," said Frison. "But I think it is also important to recognize Belgium's contributions. The government has been a
long-term supporter of research on the banana, from laboratory studies at KULeuven to field deployment of improved
varieties and growing techniques. Without that, we might not have had any cryopreserved specimens to send to France."
The news item on this page is copyright by the organization where it originated - Fair use notice
Other news from this source
Copyright © SeedQuest - All rights reserved
http://www.seedquest.com/News/releases/2008/february/21855.htm
2/26/2008
Global seed vault opens in Norway - Print Version - International Herald Tribune
Page 1 of 2
Global seed vault opens in Norway
The Associated Press
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
LONGYEARBYEN, Norway: A "doomsday" seed vault built to protect millions of food crops from
climate change, wars and natural disasters opened Tuesday deep within an Arctic mountain in the
remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard.
"The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is our insurance policy," Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg
told delegates at the opening ceremony. "It is the Noah's Ark for securing biological diversity for future
generations."
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari
Maathai of Kenya were among the dozens of guests who had bundled up for the ceremony inside the
vault, about 425 feet deep inside a frozen mountain.
"This is a frozen Garden of Eden," Barroso said, standing in one of the frosty vaults against of
backdrop of large discs made of ice.
The vault will serve as a backup for hundreds of other seed banks worldwide. It has the capacity to
store 4.5 million seed samples from around the world and shield them from man-made and natural
disasters.
Dug into the permafrost of the mountain, it has been built to withstand an earthquake or a nuclear
strike.
To mark the opening, guests carried the first 75 boxes of seeds down a red carpet through the steel
and concrete-lined tunnel to the vaults.
Norway owns the vault in Svalbard, a frigid archipelago about 620 miles from the North Pole. It paid
$9.1 million for the construction. Other countries can deposit seeds without charge and reserve the
right to withdraw them upon need.
The collecting of seeds is funded by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which was founded by the U.N.
Food and Agriculture Organization and Biodiversity International, a Rome-based research group.
"Crop diversity will soon prove to be our most potent and indispensable resource for addressing
climate change, water and energy supply constraints, and for meeting the food needs of a growing
population," said Cary Fowler, head of the Global Crop Diversity Trust.
Svalbard is cold, but giant air conditioning units have chilled the vault further to -0.4 Fahrenheit, a
temperature at which experts say many seeds could last for 1,000 years.
Stoltenberg and Maathai placed the first box of seeds in the vault during the opening ceremony
container of rice seeds from 104 countries.
a
"This is unique. This is very visionary. It is a precaution for the future," Maathai, a Crop Diversity Trust
board member, told The Associated Press after the ceremony.
The seeds are packed in silvery foil containers as many as 500 in each sample and placed on
blue and orange metal shelves inside three 32 foot-by-88-foot storage chambers. Each vault can hold
1.5 million sample packages of all types of crop seeds.
Construction leader Magnus Bredeli-Tveiten said the vault is designed to withstand earthquakes
successfully tested by a 6.2-magnitude temblor off Svalbard last week and even a direct nuclear
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=10396848
2/26/2008
Global seed vault opens in Norway - Print Version - International Herald Tribune
Page 2 of 2
strike.
Many other seed banks are in less protected areas. For example, war wiped out seed banks in Iraq
and Afghanistan, and one in the Philippines was flooded in the wake of a typhoon in 2006.
___
On the Net:
http://www.croptrust.org
http://www.seedvault.no
Notes:
Copyright © 2008 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=10396848
2/26/2008
Financial Express : Icrisat to deposit germplasm at Svalbard Global Seed Vault
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Print Story
Icrisat to deposit germplasm at Svalbard Global Seed Vault
Commodities Bureau
Posted online: Tuesday , February 26, 2008 at 0136 hrs
Hyderabad, Feb 25International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (Icrisat) has joined a group of international organisations that will
deposit seeds of germplasm of mandate crops at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, to be inaugurated on Tuesday. It is the global initiative to store
seeds of agricultural crops from across the world in a specially created seed vault. The Svalbard archipelago is half way between the northern coast
of Norway and the North Pole.
Located in a remote, yet accessible location within a mountain under permafrost (permanently frozen layer) conditions, the Svalbard Seed Vault has
a natural temperature of minus six degree centigrade (-6°C). The vault is further cooled to -18°C and is designed to provide ultimate secure
protection against catastrophes to plant genetic resources for food and agriculture.
According to William Dar, director general, Icrisat’s participation in the duplicate conservation of seeds in the vault adds a special significance to the
project - it gives increased protection to global agriculture from climate change. The seeds of germplasm that will be transferred by Icrisat are those
of hardy dryland crops that can withstand climate change when it happens. These are the seeds of sorghum, pearl millet, chickpea, pigeonpea,
groundnut and six small millets.
“Mandated to increase agricultural productivity in the drylands of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, our crops have the ability to withstand the perils of
climate variability and change,” Dar said. Though a global disaster may or may not happen, seeds stored in genebanks (such as the one at Icrisat)
are routinely used to re-start agriculture in areas affected by natural disasters and civil strife. For instance, sorghum germplasm lost during civil wars
in Ethiopia and Rwanda was replenished from the collection stored in the Icrisat genebank. Icrisat repatriated germplasm to several countries:
Botswana (sorghum), Iran (chickpea), Nepal (chickpea), Kenya (pigeonpea), Sudan (sorghum), Zambia (sorghum, pearl millet, pigeonpea, groundnut
and finger millet), and India (all crops).
Icrisat will deposit seeds of 20,000 germplasm accessions in the first installment this year, which will be the first year of the five-year schedule during
which the institute will transfer about 1,10,000 germplasm accessions. The Global Crop Diversity Trust, one of the agencies supporting the project
and a partner of Icrisat, is providing the financial support for the transfer of sample.
The samples being sent to Svalbard are duplicates of the collection at Icrisat’s gene bank. Among the largest public-funded gene banks globally, the
facility at Icrisat’s headquarters at Patancheru, India, holds 1,18,882 accessions of various crops, along with their wild relatives, representing 144
countries. Icrisat’s collection has benefited the crop improvement efforts of many national agricultural research systems.
Sixty-six germplasm accessions of various crops have been released directly as cultivators in 44 countries contributing to food security. In addition, a
vast number of germplasm accessions distributed have been used as building blocks for numerous varieties and hybrids that are cultivated in many
parts of the world.
http://www.financialexpress.com/printer/news/277198/
2/26/2008
ENN: Arctic seed vault opens doors for 100 million seeds
Page 1 of 2
From: Global Crop Diversity Trust
Published February 26, 2008 09:41 AM
Arctic seed vault opens doors for 100 million seeds
LONGYEARBYEN, NORWAY (26 FEBRUARY 2008) — The Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened today on a remote
island in the Arctic Circle, receiving inaugural shipments of 100 million seeds that originated in over 100 countries. With
the deposits ranging from unique varieties of major African and Asian food staples such as maize, rice, wheat, cowpea, and
sorghum to European and South American varieties of eggplant, lettuce, barley, and potato, the first deposits into the seed
vault represent the most comprehensive and diverse collection of food crop seeds being held anywhere in the world.
At the opening ceremony, the Prime Minister of Norway, Jens Stoltenberg, unlocked the vault and, together with the
African Nobel Peace Prize-winning environmentalist Wangari Maathai, he placed the first seeds in the vault. The President
of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, and a host of dignitaries and agriculture experts from around the globe
deposited seeds during the ceremony. A variety of Norwegian musicians and choirs also performed in the opening
ceremony held 130 metres deep inside the frozen mountain.
Built near the village of Longyearbyen on the island of Spitsbergen, the vault at its inception contains 268,000 distinct
samples of seeds—each one originating from a different farm or field in the world. Each sample may contain hundreds of
seeds or more. In all, the shipments of seeds secured in the vault today weighed approximately 10 tonnes, filling 676
boxes.
The opening of the seed vault is part of an unprecedented effort to protect the planet’s rapidly diminishing biodiversity.
The diversity of our crops is essential for food production, yet it is being lost. This “fail-safe” facility, dug deep into the
frozen rock of an Arctic mountain, will secure for centuries, or longer, hundreds of millions of seeds representing every
important crop variety available in the world today. As well as protecting against the daily loss of diversity, the vault could
also prove indispensable for restarting agricultural production at the regional or global level in the wake of a natural or
man-made disaster. Contingencies for climate change have been worked into the plan. Even in the worst-case scenarios of
global warming, the vault rooms will remain naturally frozen for up to 200 years.
“With climate change and other forces threatening the diversity of life that sustains our planet, Norway is proud to be
playing a central role in creating a facility capable of protecting what are not just seeds, but the fundamental building
blocks of human civilization,” said Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.
“Crop diversity will soon prove to be our most potent and indispensable resource for addressing climate change, water and
energy supply constraints, and for meeting the food needs of a growing population,” said Cary Fowler, Executive
Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is funded and established by Norway as a service to the world. The Global Crop Diversity
Trust is providing support for the ongoing operations of the seed vault, as well as organizing and funding the preparation
and shipment of seeds from developing countries to the facility. NordGen will manage the facility and maintain a public
on-line database of samples stored in the seed vault, which has the capacity to house 4.5 million samples—some 2 billion
seeds.
Prime Minister Stoltenberg and Wangari Maathai, founder of the African Green Belt Movement and 2004 Nobel Peace
Prize Laureate, delivered together the first box of seeds to the vault. It contained rice seeds specially prepared with
varieties originating from 104 countries. The box was opened during the ceremony, and then resealed before being placed
in the vault.
“The significant public interest in the seed vault project indicates that collectively we are changing the way we think about
environmental conservation. We now understand that along with international movements to save endangered species and
the rainforests of the world, it is just as important for us to conserve the diversity of the world’s crops for future
generations,” Maathai said.
“The opening of the seed vault marks a historic turning point in safeguarding the world’s crop diversity,’’ said Fowler.
“But about 50 percent of the unique diversity stored in seed banks still is endangered. We are in the midst of trying to
rescue these varieties. Our success means we will guarantee the conservation and availability of these wildly diverse crops.
Forever.”
http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/31808/print
2/26/2008
ENN: Arctic seed vault opens doors for 100 million seeds
Page 2 of 2
Unique Building
The building of the vault itself has attracted much outside interest due to its location and its unusual engineering, security,
and aesthetic features. Its engineering allows it to stay cool with only a single 10-kilowatt compressor, which is powered
by locally generated electricity.
The vault consists of three highly secure rooms sitting at the end of a 125-metre tunnel blasted out of a mountain on
Norway’s Svalbard archipelago. The seeds will be stored at minus 18 degrees Celsius (minus 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit) and
sealed in specially-designed four-ply foil packages. The packages are sealed inside boxes and stored on shelves inside the
vault. Each vault is surrounded by frozen arctic permafrost, ensuring the continued viability of the seeds should the
electricity supply fail. The low temperature and moisture level inside the vaults will ensure low metabolic activity, keeping
the seeds viable. If properly stored and maintained at minus 20 degrees Celsius (about minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit), some
seeds in the vault will be viable for a millennium or more. For example, barley can last 2000 years, wheat 1700 years, and
sorghum almost 20,000 years.
Anyone seeking access to the seeds themselves will have to pass through four locked doors: the heavy steel entrance doors,
a second door approximately 115 metres down the tunnel and finally the two keyed air-locked doors. Keys are coded to
allow access to different levels of the facility. Not all keys will unlock all doors. Motion detectors are set up around the
site. Boxes of seeds inside the rooms are scanned before entering the seed vault.
A work of art also will make the vault visible for miles around. Artist Dyveke Sanne and KORO, the Norwegian agency
overseeing art in public spaces, have worked together to fill the roof and vault entrance with highly reflective steel,
mirrors, and prisms. The installation acts as a beacon, reflecting polar light in the summer months, while in the winter, a
network of 200 fibre-optic cables will give the piece a muted greenish-turquoise and white light.
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2/26/2008
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Une Arche de Noé verte dans l’Arctique
{
Publié le Mardi 26 février 2008 dans INTERNET, page 0.
{
Publié le Mardi 26 février 2008 dans Soir en Ligne.
601 mots dans cet article
Auteurs: n.c.
Une « Arche de Noé verte » abritant des graines des principales cultures vivrières a été inaugurée mardi en
plein cœur de l’Arctique, véritable cocon pour la diversité végétale menacée par les catastrophes naturelles, les
guerres et le changement climatique.
Enfouie dans une montagne de Longyearbyen, chef-lieu de l’archipel norvégien du Svalbard (Spitzberg), à
1.000 km du pôle Nord, la réserve de semences pourra accueillir jusqu’à 4,5 millions d’échantillons, deux fois
plus que le nombre de variétés existant dans le monde.
« C’est un jardin d’Eden glacé », a affirmé le président de la Commission européenne, José Manuel Barroso,
lors de la cérémonie d’inauguration.
Chaudement emmitouflés, la militante écologiste kényane et prix Nobel de la paix Wangari Maathai et le
Premier ministre norvégien Jens Stoltenberg ont ensuite déposé symboliquement des graines de riz dans une
des chambres froides.
« Le monde est un endroit plus sûr aujourd’hui », a déclaré à l’AFP le père du projet, Cary Fowler, directeur
du Fonds mondial pour la diversité des cultures (GCDT), peu après la cérémonie cosmopolite qui mêlait chant
traditionnel lapon, musique d’inspiration africaine et choeur d’enfants. « Nous pouvons maintenant stocker en
toute sécurité un nombre considérable de semences vulnérables et précieuses », a-t-il dit.
Surplombant un fjord et ornée pour l’occasion de sculptures de glace et de lumières bleutées, la réserve de
semences ressemble à un trident souterrain : un long tunnel débouche sur trois grandes alcôves. Les graines y
reposeront dans des sachets hermétiques alignés sur des étagères métalliques.
Seule l’entrée émerge de la montagne enneigée, laissant apparaître deux hautes parois surmontées d’une
http://archives.lesoir.be/t-20080226-00F17Q.html?query=svalbard&andor=and&when=-1&sort=datedesc
2/29/2008
Archives - lesoir.be
Page 2 of 3
oeuvre d’art faite de miroirs et de morceaux de fer qui forment un prisme visible, dit-on, des kilomètres à la
ronde dans l’obscurité permanente et totale de l’hiver polaire.
Un filet de sécurité pour l’avenir
La réserve de semences fonctionnera comme un filet de sécurité. Elle conservera dans des conditions
optimales, à -18ºC, des doubles de graines stockées dans les 1.400 banques de gènes existantes.
Celles-ci n’offrent pas les mêmes garanties que la nouvelle venue : protégée par des tonnes de roc, des portes
blindées et des parois en béton armé, elle peut résister à une chute d’avion ou à un missile nucléaire. Caméras
de télésurveillance et ours polaires complètent le dispositif.
Si une variété de culture vient à disparaître dans son milieu naturel, les Etats et institutions pourront récupérer
les graines qu’ils ont déposées et dont ils demeurent propriétaires.
Sous l’effet des maladies, du changement climatique ou encore des activités humaines, la diversité génétique
s’appauvrit. En 1949, les paysans chinois cultivaient plus de 10.000 variétés de blé, dix fois moins 20 ans plus
tard.
Or, la diversité est indispensable pour mettre au point des cultures plus résistantes, moins gourmandes en eau
et en engrais, aptes à s’adapter au réchauffement climatique et plus nutritives.
D’autant qu’en 2050, il y aura 9 milliards de bouches à nourrir.
« Nous espérons et œuvrons pour le meilleur, mais nous devons nous préparer au pire », a précisé M. Barroso.
Grand comme deux fois la Belgique pour une population de 2.300 âmes, le Svalbard --où aucune culture ne
pousse-- est considéré comme l’endroit idéal pour une réserve de semences.
Isolé mais accessible, politiquement stable, l’archipel est recouvert d’un permafrost qui garantit à l’Arche
suffisamment de fraîcheur même en cas de défaillance des systèmes de réfrigération.
La réserve de semences a coûté environ 6 millions d’euros, financés par la Norvège.
(d’après AFP)
http://archives.lesoir.be/t-20080226-00F17Q.html?query=svalbard&andor=and&when=-1&sort=datedesc
2/29/2008
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Wangari Maathai et José Manuel Barroso. Photo AP
z
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2/29/2008
The Norway Post : Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened
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The Svalbard Global Seed Vault (photo) was opened by Norway's Prime
Minister Jens Stoltenberg Tuesday. The facility will house seed samples of
food plants from absolutely the entire world.
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26.02.2008 09:08
Prime Minister Stoltenberg, unlocked the vault and, together
with the African Nobel Peace Prize-winning environmentalist
Wangari Maathai, he placed the first seeds in the vault. The
President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso,
and a host of dignitaries and agriculture experts from around
the globe deposited seeds during the ceremony. A variety of
Norwegian musicians and choirs also performed in the
opening ceremony held 130 metres deep inside the frozen mountain.
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Hundreds of invited guests and representatives from international media werere
present when the vault was opened.
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Built near the village of Longyearbyen on the island of Spitsbergen, the vault at its
inception contains 268,000 distinct samples of seeds—each one originating from a
different farm or field in the world. Each sample may contain hundreds of seeds or
more. In all, the shipments of seeds secured in the vault today weighed
approximately 10 tonnes, filling 676 boxes. The opening of the seed vault is part of
an unprecedented effort to protect the planet’s rapidly diminishing biodiversity. The
diversity of our crops is essential for food production, yet it is being lost. This “failsafe” facility, dug deep into the frozen rock of an Arctic mountain, will secure for
centuries, or longer, hundreds of millions of seeds representing every important
crop variety available in the world today. As well as protecting against the daily
loss of diversity, the vault could also prove indispensable for restarting agricultural
production at the regional or global level in the wake of a natural or man-made
disaster. Contingencies for climate change have been worked into the plan. Even in
the worst-case scenarios of global warming, the vault rooms will remain naturally
frozen for up to 200 years. “With climate change and other forces threatening the
diversity of life that sustains our planet, Norway is proud to be playing a central
role in creating a facility capable of protecting what are not just seeds, but the
fundamental building blocks of human civilization,” said Norway’s Prime Minister
Jens Stoltenberg.
“Crop diversity will soon prove to be our most potent and indispensable resource
for addressing climate change, water and energy supply constraints, and for
meeting the food needs of a growing population,” said Cary Fowler, Executive
Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust.
Most popular
26.02.2008 Svalbard Global
Seed Vault opened
26.02.2008 Norwegian
troops may be sent to
Southern Afghanistan
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is funded and established by Norway as a service
to the world. The Global Crop Diversity Trust is providing support for the ongoing
operations of the seed vault, as well as organizing and funding the preparation and
shipment of seeds from developing countries to the facility. NordGen will manage
the facility and maintain a public on-line database of samples stored in the seed
vault, which has the capacity to house 4.5 million samples—some 2 billion seeds.
26.02.2008 International
disarmament conference in
Oslo
Ola Westengen, operation manager of NordGen/Svalbard Global Seed Vault says
the seeds come from every corner of the world:
26.02.2008 Shipping: Odfjell
contracts newbuildings in
China
z We are getting several thousand numbers of potato seeds from CIP, the
seed bank in Lima, Peru
z 30,000 samples of different beans, plus a number of grass species are en
route from CIAT in Colombia
z CIMMYT in Mexico is shipping 47,000 seed samples of wheat and 10,000
types of maize
z The seed banks in North America and Canada are each shipping several
thousands samples of a large number of cultivars
http://www.norwaypost.no/cgi-bin/norwaypost/imaker?id=132337
26.02.2008 Cross Country
Skiing: Juniors on the way
21.06.2006 Afghan asylum
seekers end hunger strike
2/26/2008
The Norway Post : Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened
Page 2 of 3
z From Europe seeds are coming in from the Netherlands and Germany
z 30,000 seed samples of mostly barley and wheat are coming from the
region usually regarded as the cradle of agriculture, namely the Middle
East.
z Despite of all the conflicts going on in those countries, seeds from Kenya
and Pakistan will be there for the opening.
z The biggest contributor of all is IRRI in the Philippines. They are shipping
70,000 (!) different varieties of rice from 120 different countries
Totally, seeds from almost every country in the world have arrived in Svalbard
before the opening.
Great enthusiasm
“We have achieved an very good collaboration with all of the seed banks that are
sending seeds to Svalbard. Enthusiasm for the project is great everywhere in the
world. There may be a number of practical obstacles preventing some of the seed
shipments from reaching the opening on the 26th of February. But none of those
asked have answered no,” says Westengen.
4.5 million seed samples
Svalbard Global Seed Vault consists of three enormous caverns blasted 130 metres
into the permafrost outside Longyearbyen. The facility is designed to store
duplicates of seeds from every corner of the world. With the capacity to store up to
4.5 million seed samples, the vault will eventually house seeds of as well as all
important food plants in the world. If seeds are lost, e.g. as a result of natural
disasters, war or simply a lack of resources, the seed collections may be reestablished using seeds from Svalbard.
The seed vault is owned by Norway, which has also funded the entire project
costing nearly NOK 50 million.
(NRK/croptrust/Press release)
Rolleiv Solholm
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2/26/2008
The Norway Post : Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened
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2/26/2008
Print Story: 'Doomsday' seed vault opens in Arctic on Yahoo! News
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Page 1 of 2
- Help
'Doomsday' seed vault opens in Arctic
By DOUG MELLGREN, Associated Press Writer
15 minutes ago
A "doomsday" seed vault built to protect millions of food crops from climate change, wars and natural disasters opened
Tuesday deep within an Arctic mountain in the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard.
"The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is our insurance policy," Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told delegates at the
opening ceremony. "It is the Noah's Ark for securing biological diversity for future generations."
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai of Kenya were
among the dozens of guests who had bundled up for the ceremony inside the vault, about 425 feet deep inside a frozen
mountain.
"This is a frozen Garden of Eden," Barroso said.
The vault will serve as a backup for hundreds of other seed banks worldwide. It has the capacity to store 4.5 million seed
samples from around the world and shield them from man-made and natural disasters.
Dug into the permafrost of the mountain, it has been built to withstand an earthquake or a nuclear strike.
Norway owns the vault in Svalbard, a frigid archipelago about 620 miles from the North Pole. It paid $9.1 million for
construction, which took less than a year. Other countries can deposit seeds without charge and reserve the right to withdraw
them upon need.
The operation is funded by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which was founded by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization
and Biodiversity International, a Rome-based research group.
"Crop diversity will soon prove to be our most potent and indispensable resource for addressing climate change, water and
energy supply constraints, and for meeting the food needs of a growing population," said Cary Fowler, head of the Global Crop
Diversity Trust.
Svalbard is cold, but giant air conditioning units have chilled the vault further to -0.4 Fahrenheit, a temperature at which experts
say many seeds could last for 1,000 years.
Stoltenberg and Maathai delivered the first box of seeds to the vault during the opening ceremony — a container of rice seeds
from 104 countries.
"This is unique. This is very visionary. It is a precaution for the future," Maathai, a Crop Diversity Trust board member, told The
Associated Press after the ceremony.
The seeds are packed in silvery foil containers — as many as 500 in each sample — and placed on blue and orange metal
shelves inside three 32-foot-by-88-foot storage chambers. Each vault can hold 1.5 million sample packages of all types of crop
seeds, from carrots to wheat.
Construction leader Magnus Bredeli-Tveiten said the vault is designed to withstand earthquakes — successfully tested by a
6.2-magnitude temblor off Svalbard last week — and even a direct nuclear strike.
Many other seed banks are in less protected areas. For example, war wiped out seed banks in Iraq and Afghanistan, and one
in the Philippines was flooded in the wake of a typhoon in 2006.
___
On the Net:
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2/26/2008
Print Story: 'Doomsday' seed vault opens in Arctic on Yahoo! News
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Page 1 of 2
Web address:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/
080226092753.htm
Arctic 'Doomsday' Seed Vault Opens Doors For 100
Million Seeds
ScienceDaily (Feb. 27, 2008) — The Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened
February 26 on a remote island in the Arctic Circle, receiving inaugural
shipments of 100 million seeds that originated in over 100 countries.
With the deposits ranging from unique varieties of major African and
Asian food staples such as maize, rice, wheat, cowpea, and sorghum to
European and South American varieties of eggplant, lettuce, barley, and
potato, the first deposits into the seed vault represent the most
comprehensive and diverse collection of food crop seeds being held
anywhere in the world.
At the opening ceremony, the Prime Minister of Norway, Jens
Stoltenberg, unlocked the vault and, together with the African Nobel
Peace Prize-winning environmentalist Wangari Maathai, he placed the
first seeds in the vault. The President of the European Commission, José
Manuel Barroso, and a host of dignitaries and agriculture experts from
around the globe deposited seeds during the ceremony. A variety of
Norwegian musicians and choirs also performed in the opening
ceremony held 130 metres deep inside the frozen mountain.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened
February 26 on a remote island in the Arctic
Circle, receiving inaugural shipments of 100
million seeds that originated in over 100
countries. (Credit: Mari Tefre/Global Crop
Diversity Trust)
Built near the village of Longyearbyen on the island of Spitsbergen, the
vault at its inception contains 268,000 distinct samples of seeds--each
one originating from a different farm or field in the world. Each sample may contain hundreds of seeds or more. In all, the
shipments of seeds secured in the vault today weighed approximately 10 tonnes, filling 676 boxes.
The opening of the seed vault is part of an unprecedented effort to protect the planet's rapidly diminishing biodiversity. The
diversity of our crops is essential for food production, yet it is being lost. This "fail-safe" facility, dug deep into the frozen
rock of an Arctic mountain, will secure for centuries, or longer, hundreds of millions of seeds representing every important
crop variety available in the world today.
As well as protecting against the daily loss of diversity, the vault could also prove indispensable for restarting agricultural
production at the regional or global level in the wake of a natural or man-made disaster. Contingencies for climate change
have been worked into the plan. Even in the worst-case scenarios of global warming, the vault rooms will remain naturally
frozen for up to 200 years.
"With climate change and other forces threatening the diversity of life that sustains our planet, Norway is proud to be
playing a central role in creating a facility capable of protecting what are not just seeds, but the fundamental building
blocks of human civilization," said Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.
"Crop diversity will soon prove to be our most potent and indispensable resource for addressing climate change, water and
energy supply constraints, and for meeting the food needs of a growing population," said Cary Fowler, Executive Director
of the Global Crop Diversity Trust.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is funded and established by Norway as a service to the world. The Global Crop Diversity
Trust is providing support for the ongoing operations of the seed vault, as well as organizing and funding the preparation
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080226092753.htm
2/27/2008
Page 2 of 2
and shipment of seeds from developing countries to the facility. NordGen will manage the facility and maintain a public
on-line database of samples stored in the seed vault, which has the capacity to house 4.5 million samples--some 2 billion
seeds.
Prime Minister Stoltenberg and Wangari Maathai, founder of the African Green Belt Movement and 2004 Nobel Peace
Prize Laureate, delivered together the first box of seeds to the vault. It contained rice seeds specially prepared with
varieties originating from 104 countries. The box was opened during the ceremony, and then resealed before being placed
in the vault.
"The significant public interest in the seed vault project indicates that collectively we are changing the way we think about
environmental conservation. We now understand that along with international movements to save endangered species and
the rainforests of the world, it is just as important for us to conserve the diversity of the world's crops for future
generations," Maathai said.
"The opening of the seed vault marks a historic turning point in safeguarding the world's crop diversity,'' said Fowler. "But
about 50 percent of the unique diversity stored in seed banks still is endangered. We are in the midst of trying to rescue
these varieties. Our success means we will guarantee the conservation and availability of these wildly diverse crops.
Forever."
Unique Building
The building of the vault itself has attracted much outside interest due to its location and its unusual engineering, security,
and aesthetic features. Its engineering allows it to stay cool with only a single 10-kilowatt compressor, which is powered
by locally generated electricity.
The vault consists of three highly secure rooms sitting at the end of a 125-metre tunnel blasted out of a mountain on
Norway's Svalbard archipelago. The seeds will be stored at minus 18 degrees Celsius (minus 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit) and
sealed in specially-designed four-ply foil packages. The packages are sealed inside boxes and stored on shelves inside the
vault.
Each vault is surrounded by frozen arctic permafrost, ensuring the continued viability of the seeds should the electricity
supply fail. The low temperature and moisture level inside the vaults will ensure low metabolic activity, keeping the seeds
viable. If properly stored and maintained at minus 20 degrees Celsius (about minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit), some seeds in
the vault will be viable for a millennium or more. For example, barley can last 2000 years, wheat 1700 years, and sorghum
almost 20,000 years.
Anyone seeking access to the seeds themselves will have to pass through four locked doors: the heavy steel entrance doors,
a second door approximately 115 metres down the tunnel and finally the two keyed air-locked doors. Keys are coded to
allow access to different levels of the facility. Not all keys will unlock all doors. Motion detectors are set up around the
site. Boxes of seeds inside the rooms are scanned before entering the seed vault.
A work of art also will make the vault visible for miles around. Artist Dyveke Sanne and KORO, the Norwegian agency
overseeing art in public spaces, have worked together to fill the roof and vault entrance with highly reflective steel,
mirrors, and prisms. The installation acts as a beacon, reflecting polar light in the summer months, while in the winter, a
network of 200 fibre-optic cables will give the piece a muted greenish-turquoise and white light.
Adapted from materials provided by Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
Need to cite this story in your essay, paper, or report? Use one of the following formats:
APA
MLA
Svalbard Global Seed Vault (2008, February 27). Arctic 'Doomsday' Seed Vault Opens Doors For 100 Million Seeds.
ScienceDaily. Retrieved February 27, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080226092753.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080226092753.htm
2/27/2008
LaLibre.be - Bienvenue sur la Libre Belgique
Page 1 of 2
NO RVÈG E - ENVIRONNEMENT
Une chambre forte verte
G.T.
Mis en ligne le 27/02/2008
-----------
Une chambre forte va abriter des échantillons des espèces végétales indispensables de la planète.
Une sorte de police d'assurances pour l'avenir.
C'est un bunker hors du commun qui a été inauguré lundi dans les entrailles d'une montagne située sur une île isolée de l'archipel norvégien du
Svalbard, à un millier de kilomètres du pôle Nord.
Protégé par l'hostilité des lieux, cet entrepôt souterrain de 800 m2 conçu comme une véritable forteresse doit en effet abriter les doubles de plus
de quatre millions d'échantillons de semences issues des principales cultures alimentaires de la planète (riz, blé, pommes de terre...).
Une "Arche de Noé" des espèces végétales qui doit en quelque sorte servir de filet de sécurité afin de garantir la pérennité de ces ressources
essentielles à la survie de l'Humanité en cas de catastrophe majeure. Si quelque 1 400 "banques génétiques" de ce type existent à travers le
monde, aucune n'offre en effet les mêmes garanties de sécurité que la "Svalbard Global Seed Vault" dotée de portes blindées à l'épreuve des
explosions, de caméras de surveillance, de détecteurs de mouvements et de murs en béton armé d'un mètre d'épaisseur incrustés dans la
montagne.
De l'extérieur, seule est visible l'entrée de l'édifice.
Cette chambre forte est aussi une chambre froide équipée de systèmes de réfrigération qui permettront de conserver les graines à une
température idéale de -18 ° C. En outre, en cas de défaillance, le permafrost (sol gelé en permanence) qui entoure le bâtiment lui garantira une
réfrigération naturelle suffisante.
Enveloppées dans des emballages hermétiques les protégeant de l'humidité, les semences seront ainsi soigneusement classées sur des étagères
métalliques. Situé à 130 mètres au-dessus du niveau de la mer, le site est également censé échapper à une éventuelle montée des océans.
Un "jardin d'Eden glacé"
"C'est un jardin d'Eden glacé", a déclaré le président de la Commission européenne, José Manuel Barroso, convié lundi à la cérémonie
d'inauguration à laquelle était également présente la militante écologiste kényane et prix Nobel de la paix, Wangari Maathai.
Entamée en 2006, sa construction aura coûté 6 millions d'euros financés par la Norvège. Mais l'"arche" serait également indirectement
sponsorisée par des donateurs privés tels la Fondation Bill Gates, la Fondation Rockefeller ou encore les principaux représentants de l'industrie
semencière - ce que les milieux altermondialistes ne voient pas d'un bon oeil.
La gestion du site sera assurée par la Banque nordique des gènes, et les pays d'origine des semences resteront propriétaires de celles-ci.
Face à l'érosion croissante et accélérée de la biodiversité qui est notamment menacée par les activités humaines mais aussi par les catastrophes
naturelles, les guerres, les changements climatiques ou encore les problèmes de gestion qu'ont connus les banques de gènes de certains pays en
développement, l'abri de Svalbard représente donc une ultime police d'assurances. Il doit permettre de disposer des patrimoines végétaux
originaux à partir desquels on pourrait reconstituer des cultures viables en cas de problème majeur, comme l'apparition d'une maladie inconnue
pour une espèce par exemple.
http://www.lalibre.be/article_print.phtml?art_id=404874
2/29/2008
LaLibre.be - Bienvenue sur la Libre Belgique
Page 2 of 2
Cet article provient de http://www.lalibre.be
http://www.lalibre.be/article_print.phtml?art_id=404874
2/29/2008
Europa - ELTIEMPO.COM -> Crean un 'Arca de Noé' para salvar a las semillas del mundo Page 1 of 2
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Artículo 1 de 6 >>
Publicidad
Febrero 28 de 2008
Crean un 'Arca de Noé' para salvar a las semillas del mundo
El objetivo es preservar la
biodiversidad agrícola del
planeta. Colombia ya envío 30.000
semillas.
Preservar en una cámara
hermética a millones de semillas y
salvar así la capacidad de la
humanidad para cultivar sus
alimentos es el propósito con el
que fue construida una singular
'Arca de Noé', capaz de mantener
su contenido a salvo de los
cambios climáticos, terremotos,
guerras y hasta explosiones
nucleares, y que esta semana fue
inaugurada en el norte de Europa.
Foto: AP
La instalación (en la foto) fue diseñada para resistir terremotos, deshielos y
hasta un ataque con armas nucleares.
La Cámara Mundial de Semillas de Svalbard está ubicada en el remoto archipiélago noruego
del mismo nombre (a unos 1.000 kms del polo norte) y fue ubicada dentro de una montaña de
esta zona ártica.
"Es nuestra póliza de seguro", dijo el primer ministro noruego Jens Stoltenberg a los
delegados en la ceremonia inaugural. Y añadió: "Es el Arca de Noé para asegurar la diversidad
biológica a las generaciones futuras".
El presidente de la Comisión Europea José Manuel Barroso, y el keniano Wangar Maathai,
ganador del Premio Nobel de la Paz del 2004, estuvieron entre docenas de invitados a la
presentación en sociedad de la cámara, que estará ubicada a 130 metros de profundidad.
4,5 millones de semillas
La cámara, que formará parte de una red de bancos de semillas en el mundo, tiene la
capacidad para almacenar 4,5 millones de muestras de semillas de todo el mundo y
protegerlas de desastres. Y, si fuera necesario, sería utilizada para 'refundar' la agricultura a
nivel mundial.
La bóveda principal, de 5 metros de alto, 5 de ancho y 15 de altura, ha sido construida para
resistir un terremoto o un ataque nuclear.
En esta 'Arca de Noé vegetal' no habrá ninguna persona, pues las instalaciones serán
manejadas y vigiladas a distancia gracias controles remotos, detectores y cámaras.
La seguridad será formidable, pues habrá que atravesar cuatro puertas blindadas antes de
llegar a las semillas. Y su apertura solo será posible con una llave electrónica.
Noruega es propietaria de la cámara de Svalbard, sin embargo, otros países pueden depositar
semillas en ella y reservarse el derecho a retirarlas si llegaran a necesitarlas. Colombia
decidió participar en el proyecto y a través del Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical
envío 30.000 semillas de variedades de yuca, fijol y otros alimentos.
Las semillas se mantendrán congeladas a una temperatura de entre 10 y 20 grados
centígrados. Pero incluso si los sistemas fallaran, la temperatura de la helada montaña las
mantendría a menos 4 grados centígrados: temperatura suficiente para salvar a la mayor
parte de ellas.
El gobierno noruego pagó 6 millones de euros para la construcción del complejo, que demoró
poco menos de un año.
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Europa - ELTIEMPO.COM -> Crean un 'Arca de Noé' para salvar a las semillas del mundo Page 2 of 2
La cámara se inauguró con 268.000 variedades distintas de semillas, Y algunas de ellas, como
las del sorgo, pueden durar hasta 20 mil años.
LONGYEARBYEN, NORUEGA (AP)
Herramientas
Comentar
Enviar
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'Doomsday' seed vault opens in Norway
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Story Highlights
Ultimate safety net for the world's seed collections has opened in Norway
The vault received inaugural shipments of 100 million seeds
Norwegian govt. built vault in glacial mountain between Norway and North Pole
LONGYEARBYEN, Norway (CNN) -- A vast underground vault storing millions of seeds from around the world took delivery of its first shipment
Tuesday.
Dubbed the "Doomsday Vault," the seed bank on a remote island near the Arctic Ocean is considered the ultimate safety net for the world's seed
collections, protecting them from a wide range of threats including war, natural disasters, lack of funding or simply poor agricultural management.
Norwegian musicians performed Tuesday as part of an elaborate opening ceremony marking the opening of the vault, located 130 meters (427 feet)
inside a frozen mountain. Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan environmental and political activist who won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, placed the first
seeds inside the vault, followed by other dignitaries.
The inaugural shipment represent 268,000 distinct samples of seeds, with each sample containing a hundred-plus seeds and originating from a
different farm or field around the world. In all, the shipment of seeds secured in the vault Tuesday weighed approximately 10 tons, filling 676 boxes.
The shipment amounts to a 100 million seeds in total, ranging from major African and Asian food staples like maize, rice, and wheat to European
and South American varieties of eggplant, lettuce, barley, and potato, according to the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which is paying to collect and
maintain the seeds.
Watch as "Doomsday" seed vault opens »
Eventually the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, as it is officially known, will hold as many as 4.5 million distinct samples of seeds -- or some 2 billion
seeds in total -- encompassing almost every variety of most important food crops in the world, the Global Crop Diversity Trust said.
The Norwegian government paid to build the vault in a mountainside near Longyearbyen, in the remote Svalbard islands between Norway and the
North Pole. Building began last year.
The United Nations founded the trust in 2004 to support the long-term conservation of crop diversity, and countries and foundations provide the
funding.
"The seed vault is the perfect place for keeping seeds safe for centuries," said Cary Fowler, executive director of the trust. "At these temperatures,
seeds for important crops like wheat, barley and peas can last for up to 10,000 years."
The vault's location deep inside a mountain in the frozen north ensures the seeds can be stored safely no matter what happens outside.
"We believe the design of the facility will ensure that the seeds will stay well-preserved even if such forces as global warming raise temperatures
outside the facility," said Magnus Bredeli Tveiten, project manager for the Norwegian government.
The vault sits at the end of a 120-meter (131-yard) tunnel blasted inside the mountain. Workers used a refrigeration system to bring the vault to -18
degrees Celsius (just below 0 degrees Fahrenheit), and a smaller refrigeration system plus the area's natural permafrost and the mountain's thick
rock will keep the vault at at least -4 C (25 F).
The vault at Svalbard is similar to an existing seed bank in Sussex, England, about an hour outside London. The British vault, called the Millennium
Seed Bank, is part of an scientific project that works with wild plants, as opposed to the seeds of crops.
Paul Smith, the leader of the Millennium Seed Bank project, said preserving the seeds of wild plants is just as important as preserving the seeds of
vital crops.
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"We must give ourselves every option in the future to use the whole array of plant diversity that is available to us," Smith told CNN.
The idea for the Arctic seed bank dates to the 1980s but only became a possibility after the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources came
into force in 2004, the Norwegian government said. The treaty provided an international framework for conserving and accessing crop diversity.
Svalbard is designed to store duplicates of seeds from seed collections around the world.
The Norwegian government says it has paid 50 million Norwegian Kroner ($9.4 million) to build the seed vault.
CNN's Becky Anderson contributed to this report.
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