On the northern Norwegian archipelago of Spitsbergen, the 15th anniversary of the Global Seed Vault will be celebrated on Sunday.
The seed vault contains almost 1.2 million seed samples from all over the world. Its central task is to secure crop diversity on Earth and the food supply for mankind.
The facility also gives gene banks the opportunity to access backup copies of their collections in the event of a disaster. Almost 1.2million seed samples from all over the world are stored at a constant minus 18 degrees Celsius in the facility near Longyearbyen, the capital of Spitsbergen.
Local residents are invited to a ceremony at the Svalbard Museum in Longyearbyen, where Norwegian Agriculture Minister Sandra Borch will give a short speech on Sunday afternoon.
Teenagers from the village who are 15, the same age as the seed depository, are also expected to help deposit new seed duplicates in the vault on Tuesday.
In the days surrounding the anniversary, dozens of boxes with almost20,000 new seed samples from 20 gene banks around the world are expected on Spitsbergen.
Among them are around 2,750 samples from the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research in Germany, the country's largest such facility. Samples from the the Julius Kühn Institute in Quedlinburg are also expected. — dpa
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