A seed vault to preserve the world's crops

An international seed vault will soon be built on the Norwegian island of Svalbard (Spitzberg) to preserve all the seeds of food crops worldwide. It has been designed to withstand a global climatic catastrophe and will allow the retrieval of all major agricultural plants should they be lost.

Read more about this at Science Daily

Unfortunately, Bent Skovmand, the plant scientist who helped oversee the creation of a "doomsday vault" to house as many as 3 million of the world's crop seeds in case of disaster, died last week. He was 61.
However construction of the vault is funded and underway.

Maybe the facility could be named Skovmand Vault as a tribute to his work?

When I read about this I wondered at some of the problems in putting it to use at a future date.

Will the people who need it know how to actually plant and care for the seeds? Will the world be able to sustain the growth? How do they get to and from this vault? Can they get to and from the vault as the weather currently stands without the seeds dying? How can they bring those seeds to where they're needed? Is there any information being stored at the vault?

These are very pertinent questions, fatedchords. What would be the use of such a facility if knowledge is lost or access restricted? However, I trust the originators of the project to have thought about these problems and taken care of them. I hope!

Said By Thomas

An international seed vault will soon be built on the Norwegian island of Svalbard (Spitzberg) to preserve all the seeds of food crops worldwide. It has been designed to withstand a global climatic catastrophe and will allow the retrieval of all major agricultural plants should they be lost.

Read more about this at Science Daily

I think this is great! Did you know they are currently doing sperm banking from good old "mutt" cattle sperm? Good old dairy cows are heartier than the specialty breeds. Sort of like dogs.

Said By Melizzy

Did you know they are currently doing sperm banking from good old "mutt" cattle sperm?

I wasn't aware of that. Do they also plan to create an 'ark' of all animals bred by Man too? Then we could extend it to as many animals as possible...