Temple of Doom

"Hollowed out of a sandstone mountainside on a remote Norwegian island, a newly constructed planetary depository for seeds from key agricultural crops - dubbed the doomsday vault - is receiving its first samples this morning.

The underground, bombproof shelter, financed by the Norwegian government and located in the Svalbard Islands in the Arctic Ocean, is designed to safeguard the genetic diversity of the plants backing the world's food supply, in case political instability, nuclear war or climatic upheaval over the centuries wipes out key seed varieties from their countries of origin.

The vault has the capacity to hold a hoard of about 2.25 billion seeds, enough to preserve every important agricultural crop on Earth. But it will inter for safekeeping today an initial shipment of 100 million seeds from 268,000 varieties of wheat, barley, lentils and other crops, the beginning of a genetic trove that could come in handy for future generations.

There are currently about 1,400 collections of agricultural seeds spread around the world at plant breeding facilities, in agriculture ministries and universities, holding about 6.5 million different cultivars, or crop varieties.

The new vault has been designed to gather samples from these collections and store them in a secure facility, ensuring that if anything happens to the original seeds, backups will be available to guarantee the unique genetic resources aren't permanently lost.

Seeds sent for storage are wrapped in laminated, aluminum-foil envelopes. The vault is deep in permafrost where temperatures are typically -4 degrees to -6 degrees year-round. Special refrigeration equipment will bring the temperatures down to about -20, a level that keeps some seeds viable for centuries, others for decades.

Although the vault has been given the doomsday moniker, [Ken Richards, research manager for Agriculture Canada's genetic resources program] said he views it differently. 'I think Noah's Ark is a much better term for it,'"