"Arctic" news and stories

In an attempt to counteract threats of certain foods becoming extinct, scientists in Norway are attempting to collect and store every species of seed in the world.

Seeds in the Global Seed Vault range from Nigerian peas to Mexican corn, and they reside in a structure impervious to bombs and earthquakes (these scientists aren't kidding around). Temperature is regulated electronically, and no one person has all of the keys to the vault. And why the Arctic? One, it's not crowded, so the seeds won't be messed with. And two, it makes it a lot easier to keep the seeds at the required minus 20 degrees Celsius.

Until now, there has been no single storage system for the world's seeds. The idea came post 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, when scientists realized that the our diverse foods would most likely continue to be threatened and ultimately wiped out by disasters. These seeds are precious in part because they can scientists to identify strains of disease and fungi so that vulnerable food can be made resistant to these potential killers.

Scientists are also exploring ways to keep foods like bananas and coconuts, which can't be stored as seeds. Eventually, the goal is to have a database that farmers and plant breeders can consult to quickly and easily find seeds have certain characteristics so that they can be modified.

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The Norwegians are building a "doomsday vault" for seeds. Buried deep inside a mountain, deep in the Arctic Circle, scientists say that the seeds will be preserved indefinately at temperatures well below freezing. And, to prevent theft, as well as for safety's sake, "the mountains are patrolled by polar bears," though humans will most likely monitor the facility.

The seed depository is being created to preserve the various species of plants that currently exist on the planet, many of which will disappear with each passing year as selective breeding reduces diversity in favor of commercially popular crops. In theory, these seeds can be used to resurrect species of plants that may disappear in the future. Intriguing as this idea is, one must wonder if there would be a demand for such reconstructed species, or whether they would only be regrown for scientific curiosity. Would it be easier to simply alter existing strains of apples - through selective breeding or gene modification - than to rebuild it from a seed or two? And if it were necessary to rebuild agriculture from the approximately 2 million seeds in the vault as the result of something wiping out global plant life, it seems likely that most of humanity would be wiped out as well. Maybe the Norwegians would still be able to get there, though.