![]() ![]() When this hall reaches capacity, the second storage hall will be prepared and cooled to the level needed for seed conservation. This provides security of the worlds food supply. It was designed as an impregnable deep-freeze to protect the world’s most precious seeds from any global disaster and ensure humanity’s food supply. Only one of the three halls is in use, cooled to minus 18☌ and equipped with shelves for seed boxes. The Seed Vault provides long-term storage of duplicates of seeds conserved in genebanks around the world. To date, the holdings in the Seed Vault are close to 900,000 seed samples. ![]() The vault is on Spitsbergen island in the Svalbatd archipelago, around 1,000 kilometres north of mainland Norway, the political owner of the island. Each hall can accommodate about 1.5 million seed samples, thus giving the Seed Vault a total capacity to store 4.5 million seed accessions. The official name is Svalbard Global Seed Vault, it was created in 2008 in order to hold the largest possible variety of seeds coming from every corner of planet Earth and protect crop biodiversity. The seed store facility consists of three halls, each with a base measuring about 9.5 x 27 meters. In addition, the Seed Vault is equipped with generators that provide electricity in the case of a power outage. Electricity for the Seed Vault is provided by the public power plant in Longyearbyen. The seed storage area has an additional cooling system, to bring the seed storing temperature to minus 18☌ and ensure that it remains constant. The mountain mass has permafrost, with a stable temperature of between minus 3 and 4☌. The seed storage area itself is located more than 100 meters inside the mountain, and under layers of rock that range between 40 and 60 meters thick. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a secure backup facility for the worlds crop diversity on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen in the remote Arctic. The Seed Vault, carved into virgin solid rock was opened on 26 February 2008. Since its establishment in 2008, the vault’s collection has continued to grow. Many Svalbard visitors go the Vault’s entrance to take selfies and tick off “been there”. The quest for seeds remains a continuing mission. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault provides insurance against both incremental and catastrophic loss of crop diversity held in traditional genebanks around the world. Now housing nearly 1 million samples, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault holds the most diverse collection of crop seeds in the world. The entrance portal is a simple concrete construction that has gained status as a global icon, in part due to “Perpetual Repercussion”, an illuminated fiber optic art installation created by the Norwegian artist, Dyveke Sanne, that decorates the entrance. When it opened in February 2008, the vault contained 320,000 seed samples. ![]()
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