OSLO: A “doomsday vault” in the Arctic designed to safeguard the world’s plant diversity has received a new deposit of thousands of seed samples, including Palestinian ones amid conflict and hunger in Gaza, it said on Wednesday.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, set deep inside a mountain to withstand disasters from nuclear war to global warming, was launched in 2008 as a backup for the world’s gene banks that store the genetic code for thousands of plant species.

More than 30,000 samples from a record 23 organisations in 21 countries were deposited in the vault in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago on Tuesday, the Crop Trust, one of the project’s partners, said on Wednesday.

Launched in 2008 with funding from Norway, the three cold chambers are today home to some 1.3 million varieties of seeds that their owners can withdraw at any moment.

Among those deposited on Tuesday were 21 Palestinian species comprised of vegetables, millet and herbs, provided by the Palestinian non-profit Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC). Other than that, Bolivia’s first contribution to the vault was made by the 400-year-old Universidad Mayor Real y Pontificia de San Francisco Xavier de Chuquisaca, and assembled by some 125 farming families from local communities.

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2024