The Arctic Doomsday Seed Vault

Anonymous Cow writes "A giant refrigerated genetic bank built into the island of Svalbard has been brought online. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway is designed to house up to 4.5 million seeds in the case of a catostrophic event. The bank is funded by the Norwegian government, Monsanto Corporation, and the Gates, Rockefeller, and Syngenta Foundations. The Global Crop Diversity Trust has completed construction of the doomsday vault and is getting the facility ready to preserve the genetic heritage of the world's agriculture for future generations. There will be no full-time staff, but the vault's relative inaccessibility will facilitate monitoring human activity. Spitsbergen was considered ideal due to its lack of tectonic activity and its permafrost, which will aid preservation. Locally mined coal will provide power for refrigeration units which will further cool the seeds to the internationally recommended standard 20 to 30 C."

Comments

Summary Incomplete

[Selanit]

The summary has been partially copied from the linked Wikipedia article, but it cuts off unexpectedly. The summary ends with "cool the seeds to the internationally." Which makes no sense. The full version from the Wikipedia article is "cool the seeds to the internationally-recommended standard 20 to 30 C."

Re:Summary Incomplete

[Selanit]

Crud, when I pasted that correction from the Wikipedia article, it eliminated the negative signs before the degrees. That should read "-20 to -30 C".

Also, I've just skimmed the article, and it has little or no mooring in reality. Consider this, from fairly late in the article:

Margaret Sanger, a rapid eugenicist, the founder of Planned Parenthood International and an intimate of the Rockefeller family, created something called The Negro Project in 1939, based in Harlem, which as she confided in a letter to a friend, was all about the fact that, as she put it, 'we want to exterminate the Negro population.'

Holy cow! That's a pretty serious allegation. The article provides a reference at that point. But the reference is a link to somebody's Yahoo mail Inbox. Huh??? In my world, that's not an acceptable standard of evidence. Particularly since it's not even publicly available.

I've never complained about editorial oversight on Slashdot, and it seems fairly pointless to do it now. It just seems weird that they can't even be bothered to filter out the obvious wackos.

Re:Svalbard = bad idea

[moosesocks]

The island is run by Panserbjørnen and witches!

One person's witches are another's alternative remedy practitioners.

"Svalbard is completely controlled by the Kingdom of Norway and is part of it. Svalbard has a population of approximately 2,400 people as of 2005. Approximately 70% of the people are Norwegian; the remaining 30% are Russian, Ukrainian and Polish." -- wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

That sound you're hearing is the reference passing straight over your head....

Margaret Sanger

[Harmonious Botch]

Actually, if we cut them a little slack for a munged link, and for misspelling 'rabid', the article is basically correct. Sanger was a follower of Robert Malthus, who is best known for prophecying overpopulation doom. What he is less known for is his proposed solution to the alleged problem. He suggested that the 'inferior races' be prevented from expanding. Only wholesome, Anglo-Saxon christians would reproduce.

Where's the minus sign?

[ChrisMaple]

There's a lot of difference between -20 to -30 (TFA) and 20 to 30 (summary).

Re:Old News

[boarder8925]

But as a poster above pointed out, this story has been on Slashdot twice already.

Re:What about moisture damage?

[Scrameustache]

how long can you really keep a seed safe from the damage that the mere passing of time can cause unless you put it in cryo stasis with a power source that will last a very long time? Thousands of years http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_viable_seed

Re:Monsanto...

[Anonymous Coward]

IAA plant biologist, so I guess I should answer this one.

It depends how exactly they are made "terminator". You can make plants sterile in several ways, and one way used is for example making the male flowers (of corn) sterile. Now such a plant cannot cross-pollinate other plants. However, it is possible (though a bit unlikely) that a wild-type male flower cross-pollinates with your terminator plant. In that case, you would get off-spring. Unless of course, you also made the female flower sterile, or added something that kills off the seed in early stages of development.

Now, suppose that, for some reason, your terminator gene spreads to another strain. This would IMHO have not a big effect. In most crop species, cross-pollination is rare, and if it happens, the offspring will be carrying a gene that makes it less fit (by definition, it makes the plant sterile, or kills the seed). So the changes are very high that such a (artificial) "mutation" (its a transgene actually) goes extinct quickly (there is a high selection pressure against such a gene).

If the gene is recessive (ie, if a wild strain cross with the terminator plant produces viable offspring) it may still survive for some time, but it doesn't do anything.

So it's not dangerous in my opinion, it is quite a good technique. It is just has the lame side-effect (but good for the company) to create a monopoly on the seeds. Of course, if you pay me a *lot* of money, I can find ways around that:P
(which makes me wonder if this is legal. I mean, it is illegal (but stupidly so) to copy their construct that makes the seeds worthwhile, but it is probably not illegal to work around the sterility).

I guess, the ethically sound way of doing this would be to create an inducable fertility. I do not think it has been done yet (but i am not in that field anymore). But in theory it is (relatively) easy nowadays to create genes that are switched on under circumstances. So in other words: if you spray your plant with some alcohol, it becomes fertile.

This would allow you to get a few batches of plants with seeds.

Re:Monsanto...

[CFowler]

I hate to be the one to spoil a good rumor, and just when it was just taking off....but, there are several factual errors in the report that started this thread. Let me just cite the one that has gained the most traction on this board: Monsanto is NOT involved in funding the Seed Vault, directly or indirectly. Not a penny. The Vault is being built by Norway and paid for by the government, 100%. The operating costs will be paid by the Global Crop Diversity Trust and Norway, 100%. (at a MUCH lower cost than reported in some media) How do I know all of this? I am the Executive Director of the Trust. We receive NO funding from Monsanto, neither does the Norwegian government! Monsanto has had no involvement in the planning, implementation or funding of the facility. None. I am not even sure they know about it. No one I know has ever talked to them about it, or gotten communication from them about it...and I have been involved from the beginning. The Seed Vault has been endorsed by more than 165 countries at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. There will be an international advisory council. The aims, the operating procedures, etc. are all quite public. The Seed Vault's purpose is to provide insurance against the loss of biodiversity held in seed banks around the world, such as the loss that took place last year when a typhoon severely damaged the national seed bank of the Philippines. (I am visiting that facility at this moment - the Trust helped the Philippines rescue what remained of their collection last year.) I can only urge people to do their homework, and not be quite so quick to jump to conclusions, not be quite so quick to fall back on conspiracy theories, and not be quite so quick to condemn one of the few positive initiatives in this world to safeguard the diversity of an important natural resource for future generations. As hard as it might be to believe in these troubled times, some people really are looking ahead and trying to do positive things to safeguard humanity. For more information, see: www.croptrust.org Thanks for taking the time to consider the situation.

Seed potatoes are potatoes but potato seeds aren't

[douglips]

Apparently you can use true potato seeds to grow seed potatoes.
http://www.growseed.org/potato-breeding.html
Quote:

TPS-true potato seed-is harvested from the berries that grow among the foliage of potato plants. An average plant produces dozens of berries, each of which contains hundreds of tiny seeds. Similar in appearance to tomato seed, TPS is usually sown in seedbeds three or four weeks prior to the potato planting season. The plants in the beds produce small tubers, sometimes called tuberlets, which farmers plant in the field much as they would conventional seed tubers.

This practice sidesteps much of the drudgery involved in handling heavy seed tube[r]s, provides farmers with vigorous disease-free seed, and eliminates the need to store part of the previous year's crop for following year's planting. Many of the production problems that potato farmers experience result from the deterioration of the seed tubers they save for planting, storing them for eight to nine months in inadequate storage facilities.