Traduzione “Svalbard”

What is the Global Seed Vault?

In the depths of a frozen mountain, on an island between Norway and the North Pole, there is a resource of
vital importance for the future of the humankind.
I’m not talking about coal, oil or precious minerals, but seeds.

Million and millions of tiny seeds from more than 930,000 species of food crop are kept in Global Seed Vault
on Spitsbergen, an island in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard.
The facility is basically a huge safe, containing the world’s largest collection of agriculture biodiversity.
It develops underground, with three 27 by 10-meter rooms, with 6 meter-6 high ceilings, inside a sandstone
Mountain.

But why the Svalbard islands?

As reported on Wikipedia, Spitsbergen Island is considered ideal because exempt from tectonic activity and
it is completely covered by a thick layer of permafrost, which protect the seeds.

The location, that is 130 metres above the sea level, guarantees the site to be dry in case of dissolution of
Artic ice.

The auxiliary units of refrigeration would keep the temperature under -20 degrees in the unlikely event the
external temperature rises suddenly .
If even this system wouldn’t work, a lot of weeks should pass before the temperature had risen till it reach
the temperature of the external rocks (*).
In any case, the frozen ground wouldn’t allow the temperature to rise beyond *3.5 degrees, that is enough
to let the seeds live for 50 years.

How many species of seeds are contained in the Global Seed Vault?

On the earth, we think that exist about 1,500,000 different types of seeds of food crop.
The facility was built to host till 4 million of different seeds, therefore more than double species recognised
today.
In the February of 2018, the number of seeds hosted by the structure passed the million, thanks to that the
facility became the largest deposit in the world.

The structure is managed by the Nordic Genetic Resource centre and it doesn’t expect the permanently
presence of staff on site.

A facility that can resist to an atomic bomb and a world war.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was built to resist to nearly everything: plane crashes, nuclear wars and
bombs, even thou the major threats come from the climate change.
In 2017, following the dissolutions of the permafrost, because of the extreme temperatures, to was decide
to make the structure waterproof.