Doomsday seed vault's stores are growing
AFP
CHICAGO
(AFP) – The stores of seeds in a "doomsday" vault in the Norwegian
Arctic are growing as researchers rush to preserve 100,000 crop
varieties from potential extinction.
The imperiled seeds are going to be critical for protecting the global food supply against devastating crop losses as a result of climate change, said Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust.
"These resources stand between us and catastrophic starvation," Fowler said. "You can't imagine a solution to climate change without crop diversity."
That's because the crops currently being used by farmers will not be able to evolve quickly enough on their own to adjust to predicted drought, rising temperatures and new pests and diseases, he said.
One recent study found that corn yields in Africa will fall by 30 percent by 2030 unless heat-resistant varieties are developed, Fowler noted.
"Evolution is in our control," he said in an interview. "It's in our seed bank. You take traits form different varieties and make new ones."
That process currently takes about 10 years. But Fowler said his organization is hoping to speed up the development of new varieties by cataloguing the genetic traits of the seeds that it stores.
Their gene bank -- dug into a mountainside near Longyearbyen, in the Svalbard islands in the far north of Norway -- will be made public to help spur research, which Fowler says is woefully inadequate.
"Six people in the world are breeding bananas. Ditto for yams, a major crop in Africa," Fowler said ahead of a presentation Sunday to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Fowler said the Global Crop Diversity Trust has agreements with 49 institutes in 46 countries to rescue some 53,000 of the 100,000 crop samples identified as endangered.
Agreements for preserving the remaining varieties are expected to be completed soon.
They include rare varieties of barley, wheat, rice, banana, plantain, potato, cassava, chickpea, maize, lentil, bean, sorghum, millet, coconut, breadfruit, cowpea and yam.
The varieties most at risk are being stored in poorly funded seed banks in Africa and Asia where varieties are being lost due to inadequate refrigeration and the destruction of the facilities as a result of civil strife and natural disasters.
Researchers do not know how many varieties of crops have already been lost. But the industrialization of farming has had a major impact on crop diversity.
In 1903, US farmers planted 578 varieties of beans. By 1983 just 32 varieties remained in seedbanks.
"When you lose one of these samples you're losing something you can't find in a farmer's field," Fowler said.
"We can't afford to lose this diversity when it's so easy and cheap to conserve it."
CHICAGO
(AFP) – The stores of seeds in a "doomsday" vault in the Norwegian
Arctic are growing as researchers rush to preserve 100,000 crop
varieties from potential extinction.The imperiled seeds are going to be critical for protecting the global food supply against devastating crop losses as a result of climate change, said Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust.
"These resources stand between us and catastrophic starvation," Fowler said. "You can't imagine a solution to climate change without crop diversity."
That's because the crops currently being used by farmers will not be able to evolve quickly enough on their own to adjust to predicted drought, rising temperatures and new pests and diseases, he said.
One recent study found that corn yields in Africa will fall by 30 percent by 2030 unless heat-resistant varieties are developed, Fowler noted.
"Evolution is in our control," he said in an interview. "It's in our seed bank. You take traits form different varieties and make new ones."
That process currently takes about 10 years. But Fowler said his organization is hoping to speed up the development of new varieties by cataloguing the genetic traits of the seeds that it stores.
Their gene bank -- dug into a mountainside near Longyearbyen, in the Svalbard islands in the far north of Norway -- will be made public to help spur research, which Fowler says is woefully inadequate.
"Six people in the world are breeding bananas. Ditto for yams, a major crop in Africa," Fowler said ahead of a presentation Sunday to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Fowler said the Global Crop Diversity Trust has agreements with 49 institutes in 46 countries to rescue some 53,000 of the 100,000 crop samples identified as endangered.
Agreements for preserving the remaining varieties are expected to be completed soon.
They include rare varieties of barley, wheat, rice, banana, plantain, potato, cassava, chickpea, maize, lentil, bean, sorghum, millet, coconut, breadfruit, cowpea and yam.
The varieties most at risk are being stored in poorly funded seed banks in Africa and Asia where varieties are being lost due to inadequate refrigeration and the destruction of the facilities as a result of civil strife and natural disasters.
Researchers do not know how many varieties of crops have already been lost. But the industrialization of farming has had a major impact on crop diversity.
In 1903, US farmers planted 578 varieties of beans. By 1983 just 32 varieties remained in seedbanks.
"When you lose one of these samples you're losing something you can't find in a farmer's field," Fowler said.
"We can't afford to lose this diversity when it's so easy and cheap to conserve it."
MONSANTO AND THE MAJOR GMO COMPANIES ARE THE OWNERS OF THIS SEED BANK. READ SEEDS OF DESTRUCTION http://www.globalresearch.ca/books/SoD.html "Control the food and you control the people." What is so frightening about Engdahl's vision of the world is that it is so real. Although our civilization has been built on humanistic ideals, in this new age of "free markets", everything-- science, commerce, agriculture and even seeds-- have become weapons in the hands of a few global corporation barons and their political fellow travelers. To achieve world domination, they no longer rely on bayonet-wielding soldiers. All they need is to control food production. (Dr. Arpad Pusztai, biochemist, formerly of the Rowett Research Institute Institute, Scotland)
If you want to learn about the socio-political agenda --why biotech corporations insist on spreading GMO seeds around the World-- you should read this carefully researched book. You will learn how these corporations want to achieve control over all mankind, and why we must resist... (Marijan Jost, Professor of Genetics, Krizevci, Croatia)
The book reads like a murder mystery of an incredible dimension, in which four giant Anglo-American agribusiness conglomerates have no hesitation to use GMO to gain control over our very means of subsistence... (Anton Moser, Professor of Biotechnology, Graz, Austria).
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