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Young World
Bank of purpose
Deep in Norway’s frozen Svalbard archipelago sits a high-tech facility that could save the world. If global catastrophes like asteroid impacts or disease pandemics were to strike, seeds stored in this first ever “doomsday” vault would ensure that humans could re-grow the crops needed for survival. But the vault can also save us from a more gradual disaster: Every day little-known crop varieties are going extinct. These crops, researchers say, are the raw genetic materials needed for breeders to adapt the global food supply to survive climate change, water and energy shortages, and even shifts in food preferences. The trust is the leading force behind the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a repository built by the Norwegian government to store backup copies of as many as three million different crop varieties. The vault, carved into a mountainside on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, will open for storage in February 2008. The Svalbard project is a global version of a seed bank, a concept that has been around since the 1920s.
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