Introduction to the Global Seed Vault
- The Global Seed Vault is located deep inside a mountain on an Arctic island north of Norway near the North Pole, and its mission is to protect the world's food crops by backing up millions of seeds from around the world that farmers and researchers depend on to grow food 10s.
- The Seed Vault is unique in that it backs up a network of nearly 2,000 seed banks around the planet, which are at the national, state, and local community levels, and stores extra copies of their seeds in case they are lost or damaged 2m6s.
- The Seed Vault is home to tens of millions of seeds, which are kept at 18° below zero in three large vaults dug deep inside the mountain in Svalbard, and it combines biological science and culture to preserve the seeds and connect people to them 2m6s.
Global Crop Dependency and Biodiversity
- The world's diet is over-dependent on nine crops, including sugarcane, maize, rice, wheat, potatoes, soybeans, oil palm, sugar beet, and cassava, which provide 66% of the world's food, whereas human civilization used to eat 50,000 plants 4m38s.
- The Seed Vault is home to over 6,000 species of plants, including the nine crops that the world depends on, and within each species, there are tens of thousands of varieties that cope with different conditions such as rain, heat, pests, and fungi 6m10s.
- The Seed Vault's collection includes over 160,000 varieties of rice alone, and the goal is to safeguard as many varieties as possible to cope with the changing climate and potential crop failures 8m30s.
Environmental Conditions and Seed Storage
- The inside of the Seed Vault is extremely cold, at 18° below zero, which causes ice crystals to grow along the walls and can even freeze the inside of a person's nose and their eyelashes 10m40s.
- The Svalbard Seed Vault is a facility that stores seeds from around the world in a cold environment to keep them dormant, with the seeds coming from countries such as the United States, Germany, Kenya, and the Philippines, as well as indigenous groups like the Cherokee Nation 10s.
Cultural and Political Significance of the Seed Vault
- The seed vault contains handmade, wooden boxes, including ones from North Korea and South Korea, which coexist peacefully, demonstrating the ability of science to cooperate across political divisions 2m6s.
- The seeds stored in the vault bring with them stories of the people who cultivated them, such as the Quechua farmers from Peru who consider their potato seeds sacred and have been cultivating them for thousands of years 4m30s.
- The seed vault is also home to stories of hope, including the story of Michael Haddad, a Lebanese endurance athlete who walked to the vault wearing an exoskeleton to deposit seeds from 12 Arab countries 6m40s.
Historical and Symbolic Importance of the Seed Vault
- The seed vault has become a symbol of longevity, with the oldest seed to have germinated from the Arctic permafrost being 30,000 years old, and has inspired people to think about the possibility of extended longevity 8m50s.
- The seed vault has become a bio-cultural institution, combining biological science and cultural attachment to the seeds, inspiring trust in science and cooperation, and is less than half full, with lots of work still to be done 12m10s.
