![]() They’re pretty tough plants, and in a situation where the weather is bad or there's global warming, those kinds of traits are really interesting and useful for agriculture.” “We would like to get more of the wild relatives of our domesticated crops. “Losing a variety of apple doesn't mean you've lost that trait, necessarily, but in some cases it does.”ĭiversity is cropping up all the time, so seed collection will never really end, Fowler says. ![]() “You can have a trait that appears in more than one variety of apple, for example,” Fowler explains. Diversity refers specifically to genetic traits that have been modified over millennia either by nature or by selective breeding. The world has already lost quite a few varieties of fruits and vegetables, but Fowler makes a distinction between variety and diversity. Everything that agriculture can be in the future is represented in that diversity.” “It's essentially a biological history of agriculture. “You have to walk down the aisles with some humility, because what you're seeing is the results of agricultural evolution over the last 15,000 years,” Fowler says. Most of these seeds will stay viable for several thousand years. Currently, the vault stores about 500 million seeds. Inside the vault, rows of shelves hold boxes each box contains about 400 to 500 seed samples, all in individual packets. Still, great infrastructure, very safe, secure. “It’s a remarkably beautiful, exotic, otherworldly place,” Fowler says. It is about twice the size of Belgium, and the terrain is 60 percent covered with glaciers. Svalbard is a group of islands about 1,300 miles north of Oslo, above the Arctic Circle. So the challenge, Fowler says, is “to find a place that gives you naturally cold temperatures - as cold as you can get - and from there, lower it a little bit further. Norway provided the perfect physical conditions and, not coincidentally, the funding for the vault.Ī good seed bank will keep its seeds at a temperature of about 3 or 4 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, and there’s no place on Earth where that is possible to achieve naturally, without mechanical cooling. Norway was the ideal location for the Global Seed Vault, in part, because of the positive role the country so often plays in international discussions and debates, Fowler says. In other words, it's an extinction event.” And every time something bad happens like that, we lose that variety. “Likewise, even in a really great seed bank, something bad will happen to a particular sample, just by accident or mismanagement. “Seed banks are a bit like libraries, and every once in a while something bad happens to an individual book in a library,” he explains. For example, there was a fire and a flood inside the Philippines' national seed bank, while the Iraqi and Afghan seed banks were destroyed and badly damaged by war. ![]() The world needs a backup because catastrophic things happen to seed banks at a local or national level, Fowler says. There we're storing backup copies - seed samples of, currently, more than 850,000 different crop varieties.” So we went close to the north pole, where it's very cold, and we built a facility inside of a mountain, which makes it also very secure. “You need freezing temperatures to conserve seeds long term. “The idea is that we want to provide fail-safe protection for the diversity of our agricultural crops, diversity that is stored in the form of seeds,” Fowler says. ![]() The vault, says its founder, Cary Fowler, is “the backup insurance policy for all the seed banks around the world." Fowler has just come out with a book featuring stunning photography called, " Seeds on Ice," which tells the story of the seed vault's founding and its purpose. Progress through levels and grow crops to unlock additional tools and customise your robotic suit.Deep in an icy mountain not far from the north pole are rows upon rows of boxes filled with seeds - nearly a million samples gathered from the seed collections of nations around the globe. Rescue the seeds from these critical species and return them to the safety of the Vault.įind nutrients to nurture your seeds and grow a sustainable crop in your Vault. Locate and collect Earth’s precious remaining plant life. Adventure around in your robotic suit using its tools and abilities to explore challenging environments. You’re on a lone mission to rescue Earth’s precious plant life. Unlock additional tools and items to customise your suit. Nurture seeds to grow new sustainable crops. Find and collect seeds and return them to the safety of the Vault. In your robotic suit navigate a flooded city, break into an underground lair and explore ancient pyramids. ![]()
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