![]() ![]() It invited any of more than 1,400 gene banks around the world to send duplicate seeds so their priceless genes won’t be lost if disaster strikes. Norway opened the vault in 2008 on a remote archipelago in the High Arctic. Throughout history, human diets have included more than 7,000 plant species, but farmers grow fewer than 150 of those today, according to Svalbard. ![]() “The most common misconception is that this is a ‘doomsday vault,’” said Ola Westengen, who co-ordinates operations and management for the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, where the Syrian seeds were sent for safekeeping. ![]() It’s also prudent insurance against the day-to-day earthquakes, fires, wars and other catastrophes. Preserving the widest variety of seeds allows scientists to look for solutions to future food crises in the genes of species passed over in favour of those that now dominate modern agriculture. The struggle to rescue the Syrian seeds is part of a worldwide effort to preserve and nurture the genetic heritage of plants that feed us today, along with strains abandoned by commercial farmers long ago or others that only grow wild. Most of the seeds, which could prove crucial to feeding millions of people as the world’s climate warms and deserts spread along with pests and diseases, are now in safe storage behind heavy steel doors, deep in a mountainside in Norway’s High Arctic. LONGYEARBYEN, NORWAY-In the middle of a savage civil war, a team of scientists in Syria has been quietly rescuing tiny bits of a global treasure: seeds with genetic roots running back to the beginning of civilization. You shouldn’t keep your eggs in one basket.” It’s for the smaller natural and political disasters that can strike gene banks around the world. ![]()
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