On the island of Spitsbergen, located in the Arctic ocean in 2006 was built a unique structure – the world Bank-selenoprecise. It was decided to store planting material for almost all agricultural plants existing in the world, in case the Earth will suffer a sad fate in the event of nuclear war or natural disaster, then you will have to sow it from scratch. The vault was built with the money of the Norwegian authorities and cost $ 9 000 000$. Over time it became clear that the project needs to develop, so Norway is ready to invest extra funds.
Just on the expansion and improvement of the vault, the Norwegian government has allocated 100 million Norwegian kroner (12.7 million dollars). For this money it is planned to construct an additional service tunnel to access the facility, and a warehouse that will provide storage backup electricity in case of unexpected shutdown of the external power. In addition, the building will be established and launched additional cooling system, and organized withdrawal allotted to its heat.
The Minister of agriculture and food industry in Norway John Dale argues that construction will begin very soon. The authorities believe that the salvation of such valuable genetic material is a very important task that requires a more expeditious implementation. Today in the vault are more than 4.5 million seeds of various agricultural plants (more than 890 000 samples from different countries), among which different varieties of rice, potatoes, corn, wheat, barley and other crops.
Svalbard global seed vault, it was decided to improve
Sergey Grey