svalbard global seed vault

There’s a Heatwave at the Arctic ‘Doomsday Vault’

There’s a Heatwave at the Arctic ‘Doomsday Vault’

By Johnny Wood What better place to build a Doomsday Vault than the remote, snow-covered islands of Norway’s Arctic Svalbard? Sitting around 1,000 kilometers from the North Pole, the facility is buried in permafrost to protect the precious seed samples housed there. But a freak heatwave is causing the region’s ice to melt. Following several […]

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    There’s a Heatwave at the Arctic ‘Doomsday Vault’

    There’s a Heatwave at the Arctic ‘Doomsday Vault’

    By Johnny Wood What better place to build a Doomsday Vault than the remote, snow-covered islands of Norway’s Arctic Svalbard? Sitting around 1,000 kilometers from the North Pole, the facility is buried in permafrost to protect the precious seed samples housed there. But a freak heatwave is causing the region’s ice to melt. Following several […]

    World’s Largest Seed Bank Hits One Million Unique Food Crops

    World’s Largest Seed Bank Hits One Million Unique Food Crops

    The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in the Arctic Circle—also known as the “doomsday vault” safeguarding the world’s most diverse collection of seeds—now holds 1,059,646 unique crop varieties after receiving more than 70,000 samples on Monday. Depositors from 23 seed banks around the world braved sub-zero temperatures to deliver duplicate seeds of vital staples such as […]

    ‘Doomsday’ Seed Vault Flooded After Arctic Permafrost Melts

    ‘Doomsday’ Seed Vault Flooded After Arctic Permafrost Melts

    Flooding breached a supposedly impregnable Arctic “doomsday” vault containing a collection of seeds stored for an apocalypse scenario last week, after warmer-than-average temperatures caused a layer of permafrost to thaw. Buried into a hillside on the Norwegian archipelago, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault contains more than 930,000 different varieties of seeds intended to ensure the […]

    50,000 Seeds Deposited to ‘Doomsday Vault’ Housing World’s Largest Collection of Crop Diversity

    50,000 Seeds Deposited to ‘Doomsday Vault’ Housing World’s Largest Collection of Crop Diversity

    A major seed deposit critical to ensuring global food security was made to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in the Arctic Circle on Wednesday. Despite a backdrop of geopolitical volatility, nearly 50,000 samples of seeds from seed collections in Benin, India, Pakistan, Lebanon, Morocco, the Netherlands, the U.S, Mexico, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belarus and the […]