Arctic 'doomsday' food vault welcomes millionth seed variety

An Arctic seed bank now has more than one million plant varieties after recent deposits

OSLO - A vault in the Arctic built to preserve seeds for rice, wheat and other food staples contains one million varieties with the addition on Tuesday of specimens grown by Cherokee Indians and the estate of Britain’s Prince Charles.

Dubbed the “doomsday vault”, the facility lies on the island of Spitsbergen in the archipelago of Svalbard, halfway between Norway and the North Pole, and is only opened a few times a year in order to preserve the seeds inside.The Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew in Britain banked seeds harvested from the meadows of Prince Charles’ private residence, Highgrove.

“The seed vault is the backup in the global system of conservation to secure food security on Earth,” Stefan Schmitz, executive director of the Crop Trust, the Bonn-based organization that manages the vault, told Reuters. One in nine people go to bed hungry globally, according to the United Nations’ World Food Programme, and scientists have predicted that erratic weather patterns could reduce both the quality and quantity of food available.The vault was last opened in October. With Tuesday’s deposit, it contains one million different seeds, from almost all nations.

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