Post by L Roebuck on Feb 6, 2006 9:19:27 GMT -5
Work begins on ice cave doomsday vault
Monday, 06/02/2006
Scientists in Norway have begun chiselling out a deep mountain ice cave at the North Pole to store seeds and genetic material from 1.5 million different food crops.
Australia is the biggest donor to the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which is creating the so-called
'doomsday vault' to guard crops from extinction and protect future world food supplies.
Trust head Dr Cary Fowler says only 1,200 crop varieties supply 90 per cent of the world's food, making agriculture vulnerable to factors like climate change or disease.
He says the seed cave will act as a cheap form of insurance.
"Both as a back-up to normal gene banks in case anything bad happens there and anything bad could be a fire, an earthquake," Dr Fowler said.
"Or it could be as some in the press have recently pointed out, a doomsday vault, where you would go to rescue these seeds to restore agriculture in case of a true disaster on earth, a nuclear war, something like that."
www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/2006/s1563131.htm
Monday, 06/02/2006
Scientists in Norway have begun chiselling out a deep mountain ice cave at the North Pole to store seeds and genetic material from 1.5 million different food crops.
Australia is the biggest donor to the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which is creating the so-called
'doomsday vault' to guard crops from extinction and protect future world food supplies.
Trust head Dr Cary Fowler says only 1,200 crop varieties supply 90 per cent of the world's food, making agriculture vulnerable to factors like climate change or disease.
He says the seed cave will act as a cheap form of insurance.
"Both as a back-up to normal gene banks in case anything bad happens there and anything bad could be a fire, an earthquake," Dr Fowler said.
"Or it could be as some in the press have recently pointed out, a doomsday vault, where you would go to rescue these seeds to restore agriculture in case of a true disaster on earth, a nuclear war, something like that."
www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/2006/s1563131.htm