TECHNOLOGY The door will open on Tuesday on an Arctic “doomsday” vault that will safeguard seed samples from the world’s most important food crops against possible disaster, in scenarios from drastic climate change to nuclear war.
The first seeds – of rice plants – are to be delivered this morning to the Svalbard global seed vault, dug out of a snow-covered island 800 miles (1,280km) from the North Pole. They will be kept at 18°C below freezing. The intention is to preserve hundreds of millions of seeds from varieties of nearly 100 of the world’s main crops.
