"svalbard global seed vault" news and stories

Rising out of the permafrost like Superman's fortress of solitude, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault stores every kind of crop seed imaginable. The official mission of the vault is to protect biodiversity and help reduce hunger, particularly in developing nations. But as its foreboding nickname ("the doomsday vault") suggests, it could also come in handy in case of, say, apocalyptic global warming.

A fairly new project, the vault -- which is located on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen in the Arctic Svalbard archipelago -- received its first seed shipments just over two years ago, from more than 100 different nations. This month the vault hits a new milestone: The collection now tops 500,000, making it the most diverse seed collection on earth. There's a ways to go before it's full, though. The vault has the capacity to hold 4.5 million samples, and each sample itself holds 500 seeds, so a maximum of 2.25 billion seeds can be protected and preserved.