Syrian War Causes The Global Doomsday Seed Vault’s First Withdrawal

9 years ago | Posted in: science | 1074 Views

The doomsday seed vault on Norway’s remote Svalbard archipelago houses the world’s back up supply of seeds to ensure crop diversity. It contains deposits of nearly 865,000 varieties of seeds buried within a mountain in case of catastrophe. Due to Syria’s civil war, it will now allow a withdrawal of its contents for the first time in its existence.

The request to take out a small amount of the millions of total seeds from within the Svalbard Global Seed Vault comes from another gene bank, the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas, which is currently based in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, but was previously headquartered in Syria.

One reason gene banks exist is to provide breeders, scientists and farmers with seed varieties to improve crop growth and yields in the face of changing climates. Amid Syria’s brutal civil war, however, ICARDA has struggled to provide this function.

As it’s become more and more difficult for the organization to handle requests for seeds from its former headquarters in Aleppo, spokesman Brian Lainoff of the Crop Trust that runs the Global Seed Vault explained that ICARDA has requested to get some of its deposits back from Svalbard.

“ICARDA has worked extremely hard and with extreme dedication to try and do their best during this time,” Lainoff told The WorldPost… see more

source: huffingtonpost

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