![]() ![]() "He had this sort of humanitarian set of values that underscored the way he did science." "Vavilov was the first one who had the education in what we would call evolutionary biology, how plants adapt to different climates and conditions, and could apply that to plant breeding and disease resistance in crops," says Nabhan. It was a revolutionary idea, says Nabhan. Vavilov grew up during some intense famines in eastern Europe, and he was determined to never let them happen again, says Nabhan.Īs Vavilov began his work as a botanist during the 1920s, he developed an idea: maybe collecting the seeds, and understanding how crop diversity across the world works, could help to fight off crop failures and to prevent famines. To get some background on Vavilov, Amory and Ben spoke to Gary Nabhan, an agricultural ecologist ethnobotanist, Franciscan brother and author of Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov’s Quest to End Famine. “He really explained why we are fully interdependent when it comes to crops.” “I don’t know what the Crop Trust would have been without Vavilov,” says Haga. New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection. World Telegram staff photographer - Library of Congress. His name was Nikolay Vavilov and he lived in what was then the Soviet Union. The vault's origins start with one man, during World War II - a global existential crisis if ever there was one. If the Big One happens, we’ll want to grow food again, right? Shelves inside the Svalbard Global Seed Vault stacked with boxes of seeds from around the world. Protecting our food supply is probably the one thing the whole world can get behind. South Korea’s seeds sit next to North Korea’s. Any nation can store seeds in the vault for free, making the vault a sort of world peace zone. (Mari Tefre/Global Crop Diversity Trust)įor each crop, there’s an envelope with 500 seeds, says Marie Haga, executive director of the Crop Trust. We stumbled across this story while browsing one of the most popular subreddits, /r/todayilearned. It’s called the Crop Trust, and it’s meant to be a backup for humanity if… when?. (Photo/Crop Trust)īuilt into the side of the mountain, the vault holds seeds: seeds for every edible plant you can think of. Reindeer near the vault, in Svalbard, Norway. Svalbard is almost like the end of the Earth - it’s a remote place with reindeer, Arctic foxes and about 2,500 humans. The vault in question is located far north, up in a Norwegian archipelago called Svalbard. The contents don’t glitter or shine or pay for anything, but they are probably the most valuable items in the world. This week on Endless Thread, we talk about a real vault, one that holds not only secrets, but actual valuables as well. Scientists also strive to create newer, more resilient varieties of crops that already exist, and the seed bank functions as a reserve from which they can draw for experimental purposes.Of course, that’s not an actual vault - more of a metaphorical one. As rising temperatures and other aspects of climate change threaten the Earth’s plants, there is risk of not only losing species but also becoming overly reliant on those that remain, making humanity more vulnerable and increasing food insecurity. The enormous vault, where seeds can be stored in such a way that they remain viable for decades or even centuries, opened in 2008.Īccording to the Crop Trust, the seed vault is meant to preserve crop diversity and contribute to the global struggle to end hunger. Its location, deep within a high mountain on an island covered by permafrost, is ideal for cold storage and will protect the seeds even in the event of a major rise in sea levels. Managed jointly by the Global Crop Diversity Trust (the Crop Trust), the Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen), and the Norwegian government, the Seed Vault grew out of several different efforts to preserve specimens of the world’s plants. The vault, which now has the capacity to hold 2.25 billion seeds, is intended to “provide insurance against both incremental and catastrophic loss of crop diversity.” On June 19, 2006, on the remote island of Spitsbergen halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, the prime ministers of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Iceland lay the ceremonial first stone of the Global Seed Vault. ![]()
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