OSLO - A vault in the Arctic built to preserve seeds for rice, wheat and other food staples contains one million varieties with the addition on Tuesday of specimens grown by Cherokee Indians and the estate of Britain’s Prince Charles.
Dubbed the “doomsday vault”, the facility lies on the island of Spitsbergen in the archipelago of Svalbard, halfway between Norway and the North Pole, and is only opened a few times a year in order to preserve the seeds inside.The Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew in Britain banked seeds harvested from the meadows of Prince Charles’ private residence, Highgrove.
“The seed vault is the backup in the global system of conservation to secure food security on Earth,” Stefan Schmitz, executive director of the Crop Trust, the Bonn-based organization that manages the vault, told Reuters. One in nine people go to bed hungry globally, according to the United Nations’ World Food Programme, and scientists have predicted that erratic weather patterns could reduce both the quality and quantity of food available.The vault was last opened in October. With Tuesday’s deposit, it contains one million different seeds, from almost all nations.
Bit like that can of pilchards in the back of your cupboard, hope you never have to use it but glad it's there!
Let’s hope for all of us this facility does not melt
Indians should have kept theirs
👽
Should work well with the Russian Nuclear Titanic nearby
might be put to use sooner that anticipated!
Is this the vault that Soviet scientists starved to death to protect during the siege of Leningrad? I wonder how many of us would have the willpower and moral fortitude not to touch a treasure trove of food under such circumstances.
That's a lot of varieties. I think I only have several hundred.
Yeah, it's more than fine to report this. What with the coronavirus and all that.
Wasn’t this the place which was in risk of melting a few years ago?
WE 🗣ARE 🗣NOT 🗣 INDIANS. 🗣 We are the Cherokee Nation. Do better and correct your articles.
Everyone should be learning how seeds work and storing some of their own. I'm not talking doomsday peppers or anything, but how plants work and how to gather their seeds and keep them viable is rather involved and sometimes tricky. SeedHoarders LOL 😉
Seems like a bad place to grow plants, the Arctic. I’m a liberal arts major. I’m just spitballing here.
Pigeon Pee 👀
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