Noah's Ark For Seed Crops

When the vault is fully operational, in a little more than a year's time, it will begin housing upward of three million seed samples from every country in the world. Some of these plants barely remain in cultivation, but they may contain a genetic richness yet to be fully explored. The idea for a global seed bank sprang from the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity in 1993. It is to be managed by the UN-backed Global Crop Diversity Trust, to which Canada has been an important contributor. Norway, Sweden and a handful of other countries are taking the lead role in bringing the plan to fruition. Norway first proposed the idea of a so-called doomsday vault a year ago and will drill a concrete reinforced tunnel 70 metres into a mountain on its remote Svalbard archipelago, less than 1,000 kilometres from the North Pole. The site will have bombproof doors and at least two airlocks and will be remote-controlled from Sweden. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5094450.stm.

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