There are debates over which approach is better but I believe we need both to preserve threatened species. This essentially means conservation ‘in place’ ( in situ ) and ‘out of place’ ( ex situ ).Īn in situ approach is like keeping crops in their natural habitat like a farmer’ fields or in the wild, allowing them to adapt to changing conditions of the soil, temperature, humidity, etc.Īn ex situ approach is collecting and storing these crops, mostly in the forms of seeds, in gene banks like the ones in Svalbard and Ukraine. There are more than 1,700 seed banks - also called gene banks - around the world and these can range from small national collections in a nondescript building to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, the epitome of cool ( literally ) built 120 metres into the rock face on a remote island above the Arctic Circle, where polar bears roam. Which is why seed banks are crucial - they provide us with crucial back-ups for when storms, bombs, pests and other threats wipe out entire crops and research material for scientists to come up with crops that are resilient to increasingly hostile weather patterns. The world used to cultivate around 7,000 different plants but experts say we now get about 60% of our calories from three main crops - maize, wheat and rice.
You tube doomsday vault for seeds archive#
The objective is to both archive and preserve crop biodiversity. In more developed countries, they are stored in vaults that are underground and/or protected from natural disasters, military attacks and nuclear war. These are physical buildings that house seeds, but usually in dehydrated or frozen form inside freezers or vaults that are set to sub-zero temperatures.
These updates are very welcome but it doesn’t mean the site or the genetic resources so crucial for growing our food are now safe. This Newsweek Fact Check piece is a handy guide. Later articles, by The Economist (May 25) and Reuters (Jun 1) further clarified that it was only a research facility that was damaged, not the whole seed bank. I haven’t been able to find the video as it is set to private. On May 19, Kyiv Post provided a touch more detail, and said it was “nearly destroyed” by Russian shelling. The Odessa Journal wrote a short news item on May 16 that invaders destroyed it, citing an announcement by the institute’s lead researcher Sergey Avramenko on his private YouTube channel. It is the country’s second-largest city and one of the worst-affected by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Īt the beginning of 2021, the seed bank, the tenth largest in the world, had more than 150,000 specimens belonging to 544 crops and 1,802 species of plants but only 4% were backed up in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault ( pictured ). ‘More Seeds in the Doomsday Vault’ from Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.The National Gene Bank of Plants of Ukrain was founded in 1908 and based in Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine.
Photo, posted August 29, 2016, courtesy of Christopher Michel via Flickr. ‘Doomsday Vault’ Gains 50,000 Seeds to Fend Off Food Crises The Global Seed Vault is not just a Doomsday Vault but is an important tool for finding solutions to pressing regional and global challenges. The reconstituted seeds could play a critical role in developing climate-resilient crops for generations.
In fact, the seed withdrawal for Syria included rice, potato, and wheat seeds, among others, that were subsequently modified by ICARDA for use in the dry zone. Included in this large new deposit were more than 15,000 samples modified by the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), which is an organization that specializes in dry zone agriculture – places where water resources are poor. The new deposit included samples from gene banks in 12 different countries. Recently, the vault gained 50,000 new seed samples from collections around the world. In 2015, the Syrian war brought about the first withdrawal from the seed vault, replacing seeds damaged in a gene bank in war-torn Aleppo. In 2008, the Global Seed Vault was built, carved 500 feet into the side of a mountain in one of the most remote spots on the planet. There are more than 1,700 gene banks around the world that keep collections of seeds, but all of them are vulnerable to war, natural disasters, equipment malfunctions, and other problems. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, tucked away on a Norwegian island far above the Arctic Circle, is often described as humanity’s last hope against extinction after some global crisis and is popularly known as the “Doomsday Vault.” Although its mission is to keep the world’s seeds safe, it wasn’t actually created to reseed the planet after a world-wide catastrophe.
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