Deep in permafrost - a seed bank to save the world

http://www.guardian.co.uk/conservation/story/0,,1801499,00.html

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An ambitious project to safeguard future food supplies began yesterday with the launch of a "Noah's ark" for the world's most important plants.

The new Svalbard International Seed Vault will serve as a repository for crucial seeds in the event of a global catastrophe, said Norway's agriculture minister, Terje Riis-Johansen.

Carved into the permafrost and rock of the remote Svalbard peninsula, it will eventually house 3m seed samples from every country in the world.

"This facility will provide a practical means to re-establish crops obliterated by major disasters," said Cary Fowler, the executive secretary of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which will manage the seed bank. "But crop diversity is imperiled not just by a cataclysmic event, such as a nuclear war, but also by natural disasters, accidents, mismanagement, and short-sighted budget cuts."

Agriculture relies on collections of crop species and their wild relatives. Seed banks are vital to the development of new crop varieties and, without them, agriculture would grind to a halt. Samples of the world's agricultural biodiversity, including crops such as wheat, apple and potato, are scattered across 1,400 seed banks around the world.

All these seed banks are at risk from local problems. Mr Fowler cited the example of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda as times when dozens of unique crops had been wiped out. At the same time, those countries' own seed banks had been destroyed, meaning the genes were lost for ever. "You can use the word extinction in this case," he said. "This would no longer occur once the [Svalbard] seed bank opened."

The Norwegian government and the Global Crop Diversity Trust have worked on the idea of building a global seed bank of last resort in the Arctic ice since 2004.

On Monday, the prime ministers of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland launched the 30m kroner (£2.6m) project at a ceremony near the town of Longyearbyen, in Norway's remote Svalbard Islands, roughly 620 miles from the north pole.

The new seed bank will store its samples in a reinforced concrete tunnel drilled 70 metres (230ft) into a mountain, guarded by two steel doors and remote-controlled from Sweden. The seeds will be stored in foil packets at -18C, and are expected to remain viable for thousands of years. If a crop is lost through natural disaster or war and a seed bank is destroyed, a government could request replacement seeds from the vault, Mr Fowler said. Unlike the hundreds of existing seed banks, the vault will not rely solely on artificial refrigeration systems. The facility's remote location and permafrost will ensure that, even if the power fails, the temperature will never rise above freezing. Though the facility will be fenced in, Svalbard's fierce polar bears, could also act as natural guardians.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that 75% of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops has been lost. The US had 7,100 varieties of apple in the 19th century, 6,800 no longer exist.

The seed bank will start accepting samples in 2007. The Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, said it would be of global importance. "It will be the only one of its kind. It is our final safety net."