Svalbard Global Seed Vault

Svalbard Global Seed Vault Latest News

Recently, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault received more than 14,000 new seed samples.

About Svalbard Global Seed Vault

• It is the largest backup facility for the world’s crop diversity.
• Svalbard is the Norwegian archipelago half way between the Northern pole and Mainland Norway.
• The Seed Vault’s objective is to safeguard as much of the world’s unique crop genetic material as possible while also avoiding unnecessary duplication.
• It offers free-of-charge, long-term storage of seed duplicates from international, national and regional genebanks and institutions.
• The ownership of the seeds remains with the depositing genebank. In the Seed Vault they are stored under so-called black box conditions, meaning that only the institution that deposited the seedshas access and is allowed to withdraw them.
• It was set deep inside a mountain to withstand disasters from nuclear war to global warming, was launched in 2008 as a backup for the world’s gene banks that store the genetic code for thousands of plant species.
• It has the capacity to store 4.5 million varieties of crops.
• The facility serves a humanitarian purpose and is part of the international system for conserving plant genetic diversity guided by the UN organisation for Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). 

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Svalbard Global Seed Vault FAQs

Q1. How much does the Svalbard Seed Vault cost?

Ans. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault offers safe, free-of-charge, long-term storage of duplicates of seed samples stored in the world’s genebanks.

Q2. What is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault?

Ans. The Seed Vault safeguards duplicates of 1,301,397 seed samples from almost every country globally, with room for millions more.

Q3. Where is the Seed Vault in India?

Ans. Chang La

Source: DD NEWS