The latest shipment will bring the number of seed varieties, stored in three underground alcoves at an optimum minus 18 degrees Celsius (-0.4 degrees Fahrenheit), to 1.05 million. "It's more urgent than ever that we act now to protect this diversity before it really is too late," he added. "It has proved to be an exhausting and often demoralising task to persuade people of the utterly essential role played by all this diversity in maintaining vibrant, healthy ecosystems that sustain both people and our planet," the Prince of Wales said in a statement. Britain's Prince Charles, who is known for his environmental advocacy, sent the seeds of 27 wild plants, including cowslips and orchids collected from the meadows of Highgrove, his country home. Also among the seeds are beans, squash and corn from the Cherokee Nation - the first Native American group to send crops to the vault - including their sacred White Eagle corn. The new arrivals include staple crops such as wheat and rice, as well as wild varietes of European apple trees. 'Before it's too late' - A total of 36 regional and international institutions have contributed to the 60,000 samples that were deposited on Tuesday. "Solutions that are vital for feeding a growing population and achieving a green transition," she added. "The large scope of today's seed deposit reflects worldwide concern about the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss on food production." The head of the genetic bank of the Nordic nations, Lise Lykke Steffensen, said every single seed in the vault "holds potential solutions for sustainable agriculture". "As the pace of climate change and biodiversity loss increases, there is new urgency surrounding efforts to save food crops at risk of extinction," said Stefan Schmitz, who manages the reserve as head of the Crop Trust. The "Noah's Ark" of food crops is set up to preserve plants that can feed a growing population facing climate change. Mounting concern over climate change and species loss is driving groups worldwide to add their seeds to the collection inside a mountain near Longyearbyen on Spitsbergen Island in Norway's Svalbard archipelago, about 1,300 kilometres (about 800 miles) from the North Pole. With Tuesday's deposit, it contains one million different seeds, from almost all nations.A "doomsday vault" nestled deep in the Arctic received 60,000 new seed samples on Tuesday, including Prince Charles' cowslips and Cherokee sacred corn, increasing stocks of the world's agricultural bounty in case of global catastrophe. 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. We need to preserve this biodiversity, this crop diversity, to provide healthy diets and nutritious foods, and for providing farmers, especially smallholders, with sustainable livelihoods so that they can adapt to new conditions. 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 said. The world used to cultivate around 7,000 different plants but experts say we now get about 60% of our calories from three main crops - maize, wheat and rice - making food supplies vulnerable if climate change causes harvests to fail. The vault also serves as a backup for plant breeders to develop new varieties of crops. The Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew in Britain banked seeds harvested from the meadows of Prince Charles' private residence, Highgrove.
On Tuesday, 30 gene banks deposited seeds, also including offerings from India, Mali and Peru. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, built on a mountainside in 2008, was designed as a storage facility to protect vital crop seeds against the worst cataclysms of nuclear war or disease and safeguard global food supplies.ĭubbed 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 sealed 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
0 kommentar(er)
