The Svalbard Vault acts as a sort of last-resort insurance policy in addition to those collections. Numerous seed collections exist around the world to maintain biodiversity and food security in the event that disaster of any kind wipes out a crop variety. ICARDA's requested seeds won't go back to Syria, but to a safer location outside of the country. "ICARDA has worked extremely hard and with extreme dedication to try and do their best during this time," Lainoff told The WorldPost. Amid Syria's brutal civil war, however, ICARDA has struggled to provide this function.Īs it's become more and more difficult for the organization to handle requests for seeds from its former headquarters in Aleppo, spokesman Brian Lainoff of the Crop Trust that runs the Global Seed Vault explained that ICARDA has requested to get some of its deposits back from Svalbard. One reason genebanks exist is to provide breeders, scientists and farmers with seed varieties to improve crop growth and yields in the face of changing climates. The request to take out a small amount of the millions of total seeds from within the Svalbard Global Seed Vault comes from another genebank, the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas, which is currently based in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, but was previously headquartered in Syria. Due to Syria's civil war, it will now allow a withdrawal of its contents for the first time in its existence. It contains deposits of nearly 865,000 varieties of seeds buried within a mountain in case of catastrophe.
The doomsday Seed Vault on Norway's remote Svalbard archipelago houses the world's back up supply of seeds to ensure crop diversity. The Huffington Post published an article on the 22nd of September, covering the pending request of the Syrian CGIAR Genebank ICARDA to retrieve seeds necessary to uphold their collection. This diversity provides our scientists, breeders and farmers the raw material needed to improve agriculture to overcome the challenges of climatic changes, population growth, pests, and diseases. The collection holds some of the world's most important diversity of wheat, barley, grasspea and other crops. They were planted and grown in greenhouses before stocks were replenished and the ancient seeds once again became available to researchers around the world.The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) has requested the backup seed that they deposited in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault to restart their collection away from the horrors of the Syrian Civil War. The duplicates were shipped to new seed vaults in Lebanon and Morocco. Fortunately, the vault in Aleppo had duplicates in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Traits that could become essential if climate change escalates. Perhaps more importantly the old Syrian crops has desirable genetic traits such as heat and drought resistance. These seeds are of particular historical and cultural significance because the cradle of agriculture was in and around the lands of ancient Syria. The war in Syria has left an important seed vault in Aleppo unreachable – cutting off access to more than 135.000 varieties of crops, most of them already extinct.
Funding comes from the Norwegian Ministry for Agriculture and Food, Crop Trust and NordGen.
All coordination and day-to-day operations are managed by NordGen – an institute established between the Nordic countries, originally dedicated to safeguarding the genetics of local plants, farm animals and forests. It has been dubbed the doomsday vault because it is intended as a backup in case of a catastrophe that devastates the world’s food crops. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is located deep inside a mountain locked inside the permafrost of a secluded island in the Arctic Circle. Due to the war in Syria however, there has been one withdrawal. Duplicates that aren’t necessarily meant to come out again. This means the vault now contains duplicates of 40 % of all seed samples conserved around the world.
#When did syria get doomsday vault free
The special thing about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is that all nations can use it free of charge.
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