G Svalbard Global Seed Vault – Locker for crop biodiversity

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a secure backup facility for the world's crop diversity and it contains frozen and dried agricultural seeds that in many ways constitute the foundation of global food security. The vault, opened in 2008, is a cold storage carved into a mountainside in the Arctic Archipelago of Svalbard. The Seed Vault provides long-term storage for duplicates of seeds from around the world, conserved in gene banks. This provides security of the world's food supply against the loss of seeds in gene banks due to mismanagement, accident, equipment failures, funding cuts, war, sabotage, disease and natural disasters. The Seed Vault is managed under terms spelled out in a tripartite agreement among the Norwegian government, the Crop Trust, and the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre (Nord Gen). The Norwegian government entirely funded the Seed Vault's approximately 45 million crore (US$8.8 million in 2008) construction cost. Norway and the Crop Trust pay for operational costs. Storing seeds in the vault is free to depositors (Hopkin and Michael 2008).