The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, which acts as a backup facility for the world’s largest variety of crops against potential seed extinction due to a global calamity, is set to receive close to 20,000 seed samples.
Officially opened in 2008, the seed vault is set about 394 feet into a mountainside on Spitsbergen Island. With 20 gene bank depositors donating 19,585 seed samples in the latest batch, the total number of seed samples at the vault now exceeds 1.2 million, according to Crop Trust, a nonprofit established by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 2004.
