In the harsh frozen land of the Arctic, a special project is silently carrying out a very important mission: preserving the source of life for the future of humanity. That is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
Located on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, the repository is likened to a giant "backup bank," containing more than 1.3 million seed samples from nearly every country in the world .
This project is often known by the metaphorical name: "Doomsday Seed Vault", because of its special mission of protecting global crop biodiversity from disasters such as natural disasters, wars or extreme climate change.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is located in the Arctic (Photo: Crop Trust).
The project is hidden deep in the heart of the eternal rock mountain
The Svalbard seed vault is built more than 120 meters deep into the Plateau mountain, surrounded by a layer of rock nearly 122 meters thick.
This sturdy structure is designed to maintain ideal storage conditions at -18°C, stable humidity and complete isolation from all external risks.
The structure is able to withstand earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, and even the most severe impacts of climate change for centuries to come.
A member of NordGen, the Nordic countries' gene bank, places a box of seeds into one of the containers (Photo: Crop Trust).
Inside the vault are three main storage compartments, each with a capacity of up to 3,000 seed boxes. Essential food crops such as wheat, corn, rice, and many other varieties such as wild strawberries, peppers, etc. are carefully preserved in sealed boxes, classified, coded and strictly monitored.
What makes Svalbard special is that it is not just a regular repository, but also acts as a biological data backup center for more than 1,700 gene banks worldwide.
Seeds are sent by countries in duplicate, and ownership remains with the sending country. This ensures that, in the event of a failure of the original gene bank, the samples in Svalbard can be withdrawn to restore valuable genetic resources.
A clear demonstration of the important role of this seed bank was in 2015, when the seed bank in Aleppo (Syria) was destroyed due to civil war, Svalbard promptly provided seeds to restore agricultural production in the Middle East.
Symbol of global cooperation
Despite being dubbed an “impregnable” structure, the Svalbard vault has also had several “openings” in the form of virtual tours, allowing the public to “step foot” inside this mysterious archive for the first time.
Photos from the tour show floor-to-ceiling racks, with a dim blue light from a prism design, creating the feeling of entering a “cathedral” of science and life.
“At a time when the climate crisis, biodiversity loss and conflict are threatening the global food system, protecting crop varieties is more urgent than ever,” said Stefan Schmitz, CEO of the Crop Trust, which co-manages the vault.
The vault recently received 11,200 more seed samples from 14 gene banks around the world in its 67th storage since it officially opened in 2008.
This batch includes 31 boxes of seeds sent from gene banks in Austria, Benin, Kenya, Lebanon, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Poland, Slovakia, South Korea, Sweden, the UK, the US, Zambia and especially Vietnam.
Source: https://dantri.com.vn/khoa-hoc/co-gi-ben-trong-ham-chong-tan-the-o-vuong-quoc-bang-gia-20250605125030143.htm
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