Seed vault is gro­wing

The seed vault near Lon­gye­ar­by­en, that is sup­po­sed to secu­re glo­bal gene resour­ces for future genera­ti­ons, has now more than half a mil­li­on sam­ples of seeds from food crops. This makes Spitsbergen’s seed vault the lar­gest collec­tion of its kind in the world.

The latest sam­ples inclu­de high­ly resistant beans from South Ame­ri­ca, straw­ber­ries from the Kuri­les in the nort­hern Paci­fic and Ame­ri­can soja beans.

The seed vault was ope­ned in Febru­a­ry 2008. The arc­tic per­ma­frost pro­tects seeds of corn, beans, and other cul­tu­re crops from plant dise­a­se, cli­ma­te chan­ge, war impact and natu­ral desas­ter. So far, only one out of three cham­bers is in use; the other ones are sup­po­sed to be used in 25 and 100 years, respec­tively.

Source: Sval­bard­pos­ten

By the way, my new book is in print and it can now be orde­red 🙂 it is a pho­to book with the tit­le “Nor­we­gens ark­ti­scher Nor­den (1): Spitz­ber­gen – vom Polar­licht bis zur Mit­ter­nachts­son­ne”, with Ger­man text Click here for fur­ther details!