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Published online 26 February 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.623

News

'Doomsday vault' opens for business

First seeds placed in Arctic repository as backup for world’s crops.

Michael Hopkin

The first seeds were placed today into the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a bunker in a frozen Arctic mountainside far north of the Norwegian capital, Oslo.

The facility’s supporters hope that the repository, nicknamed the ‘doomsday vault’, will one day hold seeds from almost every variety of almost every important food crop in existence.

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  • I’ve got 35 year old seed corn, still on the cob, left in a large jar by my late grandfather. I don’t know if it’s still viable, but I hate to just feed it to the squirrels. Is there any possible value in this legacy corn? I live in East Tennessee in the Southeastern US. ~ John Mayer

    • 27 May, 2008
    • Posted by: John Mayer