Posted on 01/12/2006 3:31:27 PM PST by blam
'Doomsday' seed bank to be built
Rice is one of the world's most important crops
Norway is planning to build a "doomsday vault" inside a mountain on an Arctic island to hold a seed bank of all known varieties of the world's crops. The Norwegian government will hollow out a cave on the ice-bound island of Spitsbergen to hold the seed bank.
It will be designed to withstand global catastrophes like nuclear war or natural disasters that would destroy the planet's sources of food.
Seed collection is being organised by the Global Crop Diversity Trust.
"What will go into the cave is a copy of all the material that is currently in collections [spread] all around the world," Geoff Hawtin of the Trust told the BBC's Today programme.
Mr Hawtin said there were currently about 1,400 seed banks around the world, but a large number of these were located in countries that were either politically unstable or that faced threats from the natural environment.
"What we're trying to do is build a back-up to these, so that a sample of all the material in these gene banks can be kept in the gene bank in Spitsbergen.
The Norwegian government is due to start work on the seed vault next year, when it will drill into a sandstone mountain on Spitsbergen, part of the Svalbard archipelago, about 966km (600 miles) from the North Pole.
Permafrost will keep the vault below freezing point and the seeds will further be protected by metre-thick walls of reinforced concrete, two airlocks and high security blast-proof doors.
The number of seeds and types of plants in the bank would be determined by the countries wishing to use it.
I wonder which contractor is going to pick up this fat piece of pork?
think they'll have bird seed?
How about hemp seed?
A really seedy one?
*BA-DUMP TISH!*
> After the asteroid impact ...
Or the nearby supernova ...
... but a more immediate threat to this collection is
that you can't just store seed indefinitely. Ya gotta
sprout some and let it reproduce from time to time,
something this ice castle appears entirely unequipped
to do.
And even if it could, you're selectively breeding
strains for "stores well", and not necessarily for
nutrition, yield, disease/stress resistance, etc.
Yep.
I am all for this sort of thing, as long as I don't have to pay for it.
Norway is flush with oil money right now.
Now, before you all get goofy@ss about this...because it's obvious that you've never had to grow your own food...
This is a VERY good idea. If our ancestors hadn't sewn seeds into their hatbands and dress hems when they came to America, we'd be screwed by now.
Irish Potato Famine, anyone? They only had ONE variety of potato. When that one variety was killed off due to disease, thousands of people died. And I married into Irish. And the Irish have contributed a lot to our current society. Lucky Charms! Green Beer! Fights settled by Clogging! Come on! ;)
As far as seeds go, diversity (Ugh!) truly IS the key.
We already HAVE seed vaults in America to defend against this. And they're *GASP* funded by your tax dollars! I know of two of them that are run by the Government, and organizations such as 'The Seed Savers Exchange' and 'Seeds of Change' (now owned by Campbell's...Boo!) also have them.
Never curse a Farmer with your mouth full. ;)
I wonder why God didn't tell Noah to do that?
Welcome aboard.
A far cheaper and more effective approach would be to take the expense, and apply it to mailing seeds to people all over, so that the locations were diversified. It would also ease pesky distribution problems associated with getting seeds out of the remote "ice vault" after the asteroid impact destroyed all transportation.
These folks aren't thinking it through.
"...except for the spaceship, the rain forest bio domes, and the robots."
Minor details certainly.
No, but I am expecting one to do so any day now.
I'm trying to piece together why you're so indignantly opposed to a project dedicated to the survival of the human race. What is it about the effort that you find so conceptually flawed? Civilizations have been "banking" seed since the advent of agriculture.
A project dedicated to the survival of the human race? Really? Is that what it is? Or is it just another governmental boondoggle?
You sound fairly resigned to extinction.
Oh, I had better go out and make some more me's.
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