The food security of the world lies in vaults spread around the world. These "doomsday vaults" contain essential items: seeds. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is one of them and is located in the Arctic Circle. For the first time since its creation, seeds are being pulled out because of the Syrian crisis. Researchers are hoping to restore genetic diversity as war has destroyed large swathes of the Syrian landscape.
These researchers were able to safely ship out thousands of seeds from Syria before it was affected by the war, some of which reached the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The recent pull out of 38,000 seeds of cereals, wheat, barley, and a host of others from Svalbard hopes to reignite the research being done in Aleppo before the war started.
"In one sense, it would be preferable if we never had to retrieve seeds from the Seed Vault, as a withdrawal signifies that there is a significant problem elsewhere in the world," said Marie Haga, Executive Director of the Crop Trust. "However, we can now see that the vault, as the ultimate failsafe, works the way it was intended to do," PBS reported.
War is just one cause for massive loss of plant varieties. In fact, the world's food supply is being threatened on all fronts. One of the more worrisome problems is that humanity has depended on just over 30 crop varieties for its food needs. The fundamental reason for concern lies in the fact that global food supply can easily be threatened by disease and pests. Climate change is also a major player in the picture.
One of the solutions to one of the problems is making crop varieties resistant to certain diseases and pests. This is done through plant genetics. This was best demonstrated around 40 years ago when Asian rice was saved from the brown planthopper using genes from one wild Indian rice variety. The Economist says that this method is cheaper and less controversial than genetic modification.
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