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Doomsday Seed Vault Design Unveiled
in2mind writes "The BBC News is reporting on the completion of a design for a 'doomsday' vault ... that will house seeds. All known varieties of food crops will be represented in the structure, which will be constructed by the Norwegian government. The vault aims to safeguard the world's agriculture from future catastrophes by building into the side of a mountain. On a remote island. Near the North pole. The Svalbard International Seed Vault will house the seed samples at a preservative -18C (0F), and could be used by post-apocalyptic people to feed a hungry planet."
From reading a few of the comments I think that some posters are missing the point. First off, the idea is not to save a few seeds in the hopes that those seeds will feed the 'entire' population of earth after planting just one crop. The idea is to preserve the overall agricultural diversity of our 'future' ecosystem. As one particular species of plant (or whatever) goes extinct, the proposed seed bank would (hopefully) ensure that our future ancestors could reintroduce the species back into the ecosystem, assuming that whatever caused the species to go extinct was no longer present, be it nuclear war, climatic changes, etc. As for the location, well, I imagine that it makes more financial sense to keep them in a place where you won't have to foot the air-conditioning bill. Sure, it would be great to have these 'master-backup' seed banks all over the earth to prevent a wayward disaster from wiping out the whole stock, but I'd guess that the cost of building a cold-storage facility for an indefinite period of operation in Nairobi would be much more costly. (Not to mention that if the arctic DOES melt, we're all probably done for anyways...) And the article does mention that there are several seed banks already in existence, and that this facility is to be a more secure backup to the existing banks. Just my 2 cents...
How long will a post-apocalyptic population last on seeds that are buried in a mountain on a remote island? Provided they can get there, how many big macs can they make from those seeds?
And they might as well make them into bread, because they are unlikely to sprout.
Seeds stay fertile only for a limited time. You can stretch that somewhat by keeping them frozen - provided that the particular seeds can survive freezing, of course. But short of cryonic preservation (after perfusing them with cryoprotectants) you're not going to get them to last more than a few years.
That's why REAL plant gene banks work by growing the plants with heavy water. This drastically slows their metabolism (along with that of any bugs that might attack them), resulting in these tiny bonsai-like specimens that live very slowly - and thus very long - and eventually make seeds you can use to continue the cycle. Grow their seeds in normal water and you're back to normal plants - or gradually switch the plants over to normal water and they may revert to normal growth patterns.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way