"Doomsday vault" on Arctic isle would protect world's seeds

The high-security vault, almost half the length of a football field, will be carved into a mountain on a remote island above the Arctic Circle. If the looming fences, motion detectors and steel airlock doors are not disincentive enough for anyone hoping to breach the facility's concrete interior, the polar bears roaming outside should help.

The more than 100 nations that have collectively endorsed the vault's construction say it will be the most secure facility of its kind in the world. Given the stakes, they agree, nothing less would do.

Its precious contents? Seeds — millions and millions of them — from virtually every variety of food on the planet.

Crop seeds are the source of human sustenance, the product of 10,000 years of selective breeding dating from the dawn of agriculture.

The "doomsday vault," as some have come to call it, is to be the ultimate backup in the event of a global catastrophe — the go-to place after an asteroid hit or nuclear or biowarfare holocaust so that, difficult as those times would be, humankind would not have to start again from scratch.

Once just a dream — albeit a dark one, attractive only in comparison to the nightmare that would precede its use — this planetary larder is about to become a reality. Today, on the barren Norwegian outpost of Svalbard, the prime ministers of five nations and other officials will lay the cornerstone for what will be the Fort Knox of seeds.

"We will have the biological foundation for all of agriculture, which is really saying something," said Cary Fowler, executive secretary of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, the international organization coordinating the vault's creation with the Norwegian government.

"It is a stunning achievement, if you think about it, and it would be about as safe as human beings can make it."

If progress continues during the short building season this summer and next, the high-tech cavern will start accepting deposits from smaller seed banks and agricultural and scientific organizations by fall 2007 under the terms of an international treaty that took effect two years ago.

Then, with a loud clank and the sound of sucking air, the door will close. And the Svalbard International Seed Vault will slip into a subzero slumber — an insurance policy for human civilization.

Scientists estimate there are 2 million varieties of plants used for food and forage today. That includes an astonishing 100,000 varieties of rice, the major staple of the human diet, and more than 1,000 varieties of banana.

Seeds from food crops, which can be smaller than poppy seeds and as large as coconuts, are invaluable repositories of plant DNA. They are the raw material that farmers and researchers rely on to develop more productive and nutritious plants that can cope with climate change, new diseases or pests.

About 1,400 seed banks exist, including large national collections in the United States and China; international ones maintained by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR); and small ones at universities and research labs. Seeds are typically stored at minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit, and are periodically removed and germinated to grow plants, whose fresh seeds are redeposited.

But only a few dozen of these banks meet international standards, and even fewer have funding commitments that ensure long-term maintenance. Indeed, recent surveys have revealed a slow-motion seed-bank disaster in the making, with many collections seeing germination rates well below the internationally agreed-upon minimum of 85 percent.

Worse, some seed banks have recently been destroyed, lost to war and unrest in Afghanistan, Iraq and Rwanda — a reminder of the fragility of these resources. A backup bank could resupply regional banks.

Perhaps most important, most of today's seed banks are designed to be working banks, their contents available to breeders and researchers. That means they are inherently accessible and less than totally secure.

"Svalbard is meant to be the bank of last resort," said Pat Mooney, executive director of ETC Group, a Canadian civil-society organization focused on food security. "It's where you go if you can't go anywhere else. It's the backup for the whole world."

The design, described in a recently released feasibility study, bespeaks that Armageddon mentality.

First, there is the location: The starkly beautiful and always-frozen terrain of Svalbard is, to say the least, off the beaten track. Home mostly to a small community of scientists, coal miners and support staff, it is the northernmost place in the world with scheduled commercial air service.

Arctic foxes, reindeer and polar bears stroll the streets.

Yet it has the basic infrastructure that's needed, including a modest network of roads and an electrical generating plant fed by local coal.

Plans call for a cavern about 50 yards long, 15 feet wide and 15 feet high. Although it will be built in solid rock, its floor, ceiling and walls will be lined with 3-foot-thick layers of high-quality insulating concrete. The door will be opened only once or twice a year, to check contents and add new varieties.

Air-handling equipment will bring in outdoor air during the winter, when temperatures hover around minus 30 degrees. Refrigeration units will be available to keep interior temperatures cold during Svalbard's summer.

The vault is one of many strategies being implemented in sync with the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, which came into force in 2004 and has been ratified by more than 100 nations. The United States has signed the treaty, but the Senate has not ratified it.

Already, Fowler said, CGIAR has promised to contribute samples from its huge network of banks, which hold about 600,000 varieties. And the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the nation's largest seed collection in Fort Collins, Colo., will add holdings that are not in the CGIAR collection, he said.