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Reuters

Syria’s civil war has prompted the first withdrawal of seeds from a “doomsday” vault built in an Arctic mountainside to safeguard global food supplies, officials said.
The seeds, including samples of wheat, barley and grasses suited to dry regions, have been requested by researchers elsewhere in the Middle East to replace seeds in a gene bank near the Syrian city of Aleppo that has been damaged by the war.
“Protecting the world’s biodiversity in this manner is precisely the purpose of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault,” said Brian Lainoff, a spokesman for the Crop Trust, which runs the underground storage on a Norwegian island 1,300 km from the North Pole.

The vault, which opened on the Svalbard archipelago in 2008, is designed to protect crop seeds - such as beans, rice and wheat - against the worst cataclysms of nuclear war or disease.
It has more than 860,000 samples, from almost all nations. Even if the power were to fail, the vault would stay frozen and sealed for at least 200 years.
The Aleppo seed bank has kept partly functioning, including a cold storage, despite the conflict. But it was no longer able to maintain its role as a hub to grow seeds and distribute them to other nations, mainly in the Middle East.

Grethe Evjen, an expert at the Norwegian Agriculture Ministry, said on Monday that the seeds had been requested by the International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA). ICARDA moved its headquarters to Beirut from Aleppo in 2012 because of the war.
ICARDA wants almost 130 boxes out of 325 it had deposited in the vault, containing a total of 116,000 samples, she said. They will be sent once paperwork is completed, she said.
It would be the first withdrawal from the vault, she said. Many seeds from the Aleppo collection have traits resistant to drought, which could help breed crops to withstand climate change in dry areas from Australia to Africa.
 
 


Syrian war results in first withdrawal from ‘doomsday’ seed vault in Arctic

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Longyearbyen, Norway. The "doomsday" vault was built  to protect millions of agriculture seeds from man-made and natural disasters. Photo: AP

A sample of an ancient strain of wheat and garbanzo beans. 

Residents inspect produce at a site damaged by an airstrike in  Aleppo, Syria. Photo: Reuters

Barrel bombs kill 70 as Syrian regime hits busy market in Aleppo

A man evacuates a child from a building in Aleppo.Photo: AFP

Amnesty slams Syrian regime’s ‘crimes against humanity’ in bombing of Aleppo

Residents and civil defence members search for survivors at a damaged site after what activists said was a barrel bomb dropped by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad and hit a school and a residential building. Photo: Reuters

A civil defence member looks at the sky fearing another airstrike as he searches for survivors at the site of a barrel bomb attack. Photo: Reuters

Men and civil defence members carry an injured man on a stretcher after a barrel bomb hit a school and a residential building in Seif al-Dawla neighborhood of Aleppo. Photo: Reuters

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