#Norway doomsday vault archive
Instead of storing seeds that will survive forever, Doomsday Vault is getting an expansion to archive sensitive data and documents using specially developed films and protective plastic packaging. When the seed boxes arrive at Svalbard, the vault staff receives and register each box in the storage system and updates the database and its public interface. Prority was given to crops that are important for food production such as wheat, rice, corn and legumes. To date, the holdings in the vault are more than 1,000,000 seed samples originating from almost every country in the world. The frozen seed vault can hold up to 4.5 million variety of crops. If the system fails, the vault would take two centuries to warm to 0 degree Celsius. The low temperature as well as limited access to oxygen and moisture will ensure low metabolic activity, keeping the seeds viable for long periods of time. Refrigeration units, powered by locally mined coal, provide a temperature of -18 degree Celsius in order to maintain optimal storage condition. The seeds are stored in a vacuum-packed three-ply foil packages and placed into plastic containers that are neatly stacked on floor-to-ceiling metal shelves. Three underground storage rooms were constructed at 130 m above sea level and installed with two pumping station to remove any water that might get in, protecting them from unexpected flooding. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is located 120 m inside a sandstone mountain, providing insulation properties to ensure that the vault rooms will remain naturally frozen even of failure of the mechanical cooling system. This remote area is also the farthest north a person can fly on a scheduled flight. The location is geologically stable with no tectonic activity. Even as temperatures increase, area near the poles with permafrost like Svalbard will remain colder than other places on the earth. Svalbard is a perfect location for long-term seed storage for several reasons. This icy seed storage is now known as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. In February 2008, the secure seed bank which is the world’s largest collection of crop diversity to date, was opened on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard in the Arctic Ocean. The mission of this project is to provide protection of crop diversity in the face of climate change and natural or man-made disasters. The Government of Norway was encouraged to consider the establishment of a global facility in a remote location near the North Pole to preserve a wide variety of plant by sparing copies of seeds held in 1,750 seed banks worldwide. As we enter a new era of agricultural history, human faces new challenges and new responsibilities. The loss of a crop variety is as irreversible as the extinction of the dinosaur. While crop yields have increased, biodiversity has decreased conversely. Over the past decades, technological advances have changed agricultural practices dramatically to allow large-scale crop production.
That is the starting point of agricultural history. For most of human history, about 10,000 years ago, we began to domesticate plants as a way to make our food supply more accessible.
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