Three times a year, a castle opens inside the distant mountain of the Norwegian Island, its doors to a few chosen. Such a dice is deliberate. Svalbard Global Seed maintains more than 1.3 million samples in what is the most secure seed in the world. Much higher the Arctic circuit, which was placed in the frosty soil, is designed underground “Resurrection Day” to rotate everything from climate disasters to civil wars.
The first opening of this year came on Tuesday, when government officials and scholars gathered great distances from countries such as Brazil, Malawi, and the Philippines gathered to bid farewell. Their contribution of 14,022 samples of 21 genetic banks all over the world has been added to what is already the largest group of planet dedicated to storing seeds in the long run. Organizers say the growing Svalbard stocks, which include traditional crops such as legumes that bear drought, known as “opportunities crops”, will ensure that future farmers have what they need to adapt to an increasingly unimaginable climate.
Even with the Trump administration Support for climate related research and The courage is the United States Agency for International Development and the Ministry of AgriculturePriority to protecting crops is still a priority for many of the international community.
CEO TRUST, the non -profit organization that helps to manage the basement alongside the Norwegian government and the North Resources Center, said this deposits “more than just storing seeds.” “It comes to defusing the time bomb timing that threatens our global diet … Protecting crop diversity is a global inevitable matter. We must defend these genetic resources and maintain them to prevent our fragile world from becoming more stable.” GRIT told that it is now time for “Decision makers around the world to recognize urgency and take measures together to secure the future of food.”
The latest additional corn additions and pearls are shipped from the Sudan crop genetics bank, It was almost destroyed during the country’s civil war. The delegation is from Malawi, where A barrage of harsh weather has suffocated farmers Deepening Hunger crisisThe “velvet beans”, which are by saying that the nitrogen installed acting as a natural fertilizer. Basic types of rice, beans and corn came from Brazil, where you see such crops Main return losses. The Philippine was deposited with a fine corn, eggplant, and Lima pills already from the genetic bank by hurricanes.
“In the face of climate change, which we already feel with all the harsh weather conditions in the Philippines, it becomes necessary to repeat these groups on the banks of other genes such as svalbard to protect [them]Hidlis de Chavez, a researcher at the Genetic Resources Laboratory at the University of the Philippines, or NPGRL, told GRIST.
Confidence crop/LM saalazar
For 16 consecutive years, the Philippines has It ranked the highest in the global risk indexWhich measures the weakness of countries in the harsh weather. In 2006, Typhoon Xangsane immersed the laboratory’s main research building in Los Panos, almost wiping the group, de Chavez said: “The entire genetics bank was immersed in clay and water.” The subsequent damage and loss of power causes “irreversible” loss of many types of traditional crops, together 70 percent of the group devastating.
NPGRL has sent approximately 1,000 genetic samples of crops to Svalbard as part of a Crop TRust initiative to help “In the future, food supply in the world.Before the deposits on Tuesday, the De Chavez team prepared a selection of fine corn, lama grains, eggplant, and rice grains. Each of them is woven in livelihoods and nutritional culture of indigenous and rural societies throughout the Philippines.
However, the laboratory does not contribute about half of the samples as it likes because climate change makes it difficult to grow what he wants to preserve. This trip witnessed the deposit of De Chavez 75 only, compared to 983 last year.
It is chased by the ongoing ghosts of a catastrophic hurricane and shrapnel looming in the next horizon, every season of the storm believes that de Chavez is increasingly afraid of the weak crops that work to preserve it. It gives her peace of mind to find out samples of Filipino foods that are now sitting under the ground near the Arctic. Despite the cellar She faces escalating risks and speculation about its ability to bear the anger of the warming planetShe still believes that the seeds stored in Svalbard have a much larger shot in the prevailing there anywhere on the floor.
“Given climate change and harsh weather conditions, we cannot say that these crops will remain available to future generations, so we must continue to maintain their preservation,” said de Chavez. “If this disappears in this field, what will be our alternative, if we do not preserve it? We cannot return.”
