Peruvian potatos, rare Australian seeds latest deposits into ‘doomsday vault’
Svalbard, Norway (AHN) – Potatoes from Peru and chickpeas from Australia are among the latest additions to the “doomsday vault” where seeds from food crops around the world are kept safe from natural and human disaster.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is located in an earthquake-free zone in the Arctic Circle, 810 miles south of the North Pole in Norway. The vault is built into solid rock just above sea level in permafrost, which means the temperature inside the vault will not rise above -4 degrees Fahrenheit.
Potatoes have been eaten for more than 8,000 years and are one of the world’s most important non-cereal food crops. The Andes are home to about 4,000 different varieties of native potato species. However, some native South American potato varieties are at risk. So South American highland farmers collected 1,500 varieties of potatoes and they have sent them to the seed vault for safekeeping.
Meanwhile, an Australian farmer and scientist is sending 343 seed samples collected from China and Lebanon as early as in the 1930s. That includes a rare chickpea that only Australia still has a copy.
The vault opened in February 2008 to provide a place to store duplicates of seeds from around the world that was protected from the effects of climate change. There are already seeds from thousands of species of food crops at the vault.
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