Syria Crops Sheltered in Arctic Doomsday Vault

February 29th, 2012

Via: AP:

Chick peas, fava beans and other seeds from a facility in Syria are among the 25,000 new samples being deposited this week in an Arctic seed vault built to protect food crops from wars and natural disasters, officials said Tuesday.

The latest additions mean that the Svalbard Global Seed Vault — a master backup to the world’s other seed banks — has now secured more than 740,000 samples since it opened in a remote Norwegian archipelago in 2008.

That represents an estimated three-quarters of the biological diversity of the world’s major food crops, said Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which maintains the vault with Norway’s government and the Nordic Genetic Resources Center.

With the shipment from the Syria-based International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, almost its entire collection is now backed up in Svalbard, Fowler told The Associated Press.

“I think the events unfolding in Syria obviously underline the importance of having safety duplication outside of a country,” he said, adding the facility had not been damaged in the military crackdown on an anti-government uprising.

He noted that wars destroyed seed banks in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another one in Egypt was looted during last year’s uprising.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault — sometimes referred to as a doomsday vault — is designed to withstand global warming, earthquakes and even nuclear strikes.

Research Credit: afterhours

2 Responses to “Syria Crops Sheltered in Arctic Doomsday Vault”

  1. Eileen says:

    I guess this means that the Doomsday vault is a vault – not for ordinary humans- but one for the freaks that are bombing the world to pieces. iMaybe we humans who are normal – and don’ believe we live in the end of times start another vault of seeds.
    Like our own freezers. Start small an build from there.
    These Doomsday vualt people are freaks. My world is not crumbling into some freakosphere.
    Bite me Doomsday vault people, I am holding my own and all I can say is f*ck you.

  2. pessimistic optimist says:

    i agree. i think this is nihilism at its worst, and if anything it only serves tao justify and excuse the behavior that got us here in the first place. those with the abiltiy to kill the world thinking its ok because they can/will save it after the fact. real f*ckin heroic saviors.

    ive moved to a point where i now just see doomsday politics as untreated mental illness and extreme disease presentation backed by billions of dollars and isolated/incubated in extremely closed communities of like minded disease victims.

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