Friday, February 27, 2009

Happy Birthday, Doomsday Seed Vault!

The Entrance to the Vault: Mari Tefre/Global Crop Diversity Trust

From Popsci.com:

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, designed to preserve the world's crops, turns one year old today

What do you get a seed bank for its birthday? More seeds, of course.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault celebrates its first birthday today with the addition of 90,000 seed samples. The vault serves as a heavy-duty backup for gene banks around the world, which strive to save humanity (and our food supply) from the scourges of monoculture and environmental catastrophes.

The Norwegian government meant business when it built the vault. They tunneled 400 feet into an Arctic mountain to protect the pips, which are guarded behind two security doors and two airlocks. The underground vault is designed to weather just about every doomsday scenario, including terrorists, nuclear war, and floods of biblical proportions. It was featured in an award-winning low-budget science fiction film last year: "Frozen Seed."

Read more ....

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