Arctic Vault Gets More Seeds

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is on an island halfway between Europe and the North Pole. It contains frozen seeds of food crops from around the world.

The vault opened in 2008 to help keep crops safe from extinction.

This week, the vault received seeds from the largest number of new contributors ever. Contributors give seeds from their collections of seeds, called seed banks.

Twenty-three seed banks took part, nine of them for the first time. The new contributors came from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cameroon, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Madagascar, Nigeria and Zambia.

Crop Trust is a non-profit group that operates the vault along with Norwegian officials. Crop Trust said the boxes of seeds arrived on Tuesday. They contained crop seeds such as beans, barley, cowpea, maize, rice, millet and sorghum.

Stefan Schmitz is Executive Director of Crop Trust. He said that keeping the seeds frozen in the Arctic helps guarantee food security for the future.

The vault is set in permafrost caves. The seeds are kept at temperatures around -18 degrees Celsius.

Between 2015 and 2019, the vault helped rebuild seed collections that were damaged during the war in Syria.

Crop Trust said many of the seeds given on Tuesday were the result of a worldwide 10-year biodiversity project known as BOLD. The project aims to support global food and nutrition security, the trust added.

Norway's ministry of agriculture and food said 111 seed banks in 77 countries now have crop seeds in Svalbard.

The Crop Trust website says the vault currently has over 1 million seed samples. It also says the vault has room to hold 4.5 million varieties of crops.

I'm Andrew Smith.

Andrew Smith adapted this story for VOA Learning English based on reporting from Reuters.

Words in This Story

vault -n. A secure room to where valuable things can be kept safely.

extinction -n. the death and end of existence of all the remaining members of a species

contributor -n. a person or organization supplying money, goods, work, and the like.

guarantee -v. to make sure something will happen or be the case

biodiversity -n. the existence of a large variety of species

global -adj. describing the entire world