The Doomsday Vault or the Svalbard Global Seed Vault as it’s actually known is meant to serve as a way from humanity to preserve seeds in the event of a catastrophe.

The vault is located in the Svalbard archipelago in the arctic and is buried deep inside a mountain with only the entrance visible from the outside.

This latest deposit is the largest since the vault opened in 2008 and the first since the vault underwent vital upgrades in 2019.

Deposits were made by the Cherokee Nation (USA), University of Haifa (Israel), Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (Morocco), the Julius Kühn Institute (Germany), the Lebanese Agricultural Research Institute, the Baekdudaegan National Arboretum (South Korea), Suceava Genebank ‘Mihai Cristea’ (Romania) and Kew Gardens (UK).

To date, there have been 85 organisations who have made deposits at the seed vault. The seeds in this most recent deposit include herbs, vegetables, staple crops and other, seldomly used wild plants.

“Norway greatly values the trust shown to us by all the genebanks that have chosen to use the Svalbard Global Seed Vault as part of their strategy for securing important seed collections. We are strongly committed to managing the Seed Vault in accordance with the highest agreed international standards,” said Norwegian Minister of Agriculture and Food, Olaug Bollestad.

While it may seem presumptuous to store seeds for our potential doom, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault has already proved its worth. In 2015, the vault was opened so that Syrian scientists could take seeds which had been stored there. This allowed them to continue developing drought and heat-resistant wheat after a genebank in Aleppo, Syria, was destroyed, taking all their hard work with them.

“The large scope of today’s seed deposit reflects worldwide concern about the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss on food production, but more importantly it demonstrates a growing global commitment – from the institutions and countries that have made deposits today and indeed the world – to the conservation and use of the crop diversity that is crucial for farmers in their efforts to adapt to changing growing conditions,” executive director at Crop Trust, Stefan Schmitz said in a statement.

The Doomsday Vault is an incredibly fascinating structure and we highly recommend watching the video below to understand just how important this vault buried in the side of a mountain is.

[Source – Crop Trust]