DEEP inside a frozen Norwegian mountain, behind an entrance blown out of the rock and patrolled by polar bears, scientists have been stockpiling the world's insurance policy against a natural disaster.
With climate change pushing global temperatures beyond previous limits, it is impossible to predict how crops will fare across the globe, so a contingency plan is required.
For months, countries have been sending samples of their seeds to Norway,
to be housed at -18C in a giant refrigerator referred to by the nation's media as the "Doomsday Vault".
Should a day come when the fields burn in the face of a nuclear explosion or drought, the vault will be plundered to rejuvenate the world's food supplies.
Today, the doors of the global seed vault – the official name for the vast sub-mountainous hold in the archipelago of Svalbard – will be thrown open for the first time.
The plant's operations manager, Ola Westengen, has been working with governments around the world to fill the shelves of what he describes as essentially "a tunnel".
He said: "My job is mostly about getting collaborators from around the world maintaining seed banks that are already running, talking to them and having them send duplicates of what they have as a kind of back-up.
"We don't do collection in the field. We only work with already established gene banks, so my job is to liaise with them and to organise shipments and see to it that the boxes they send are stored in a safe way and we maintain a public database."
Once the seeds arrive, they are wrapped in aluminium foil and stored in boxes on the shelves.
Even if the sophisticated refrigeration system failed, the permafrost around the vault would keep the samples safely chilled.
Currently, more than 250,000 samples are stacked in the vault, deep in a region where locals arm themselves with shotguns against polar bears.
However, the facility has the capacity for four and a half million samples.
"The opening is just the start," said Mr Westengen. "We are working to get many more gene banks to participate in the long run. It's simple, proven technology, it's not hi-tech."
Although the vault has been called a Noah's Ark for seed species, much of its value would be realised in the face of relatively mundane catastrophes.
When national seed supplies are lost, it is usually down to an error such as a freezer's power supply failing. Entire national gene banks have been wiped out in this way.
There is also much scope for human interference. In countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan, the sanctity of the reserves cannot be guaranteed. They are often raided by looters, who are after the glass jars that hold the seeds and, to them, are worth more than their contents.
It is this increasingly uncertain global situation which has made the project possible.
When Dr Cary Fowler first came up with a "half-baked" idea for a global vault in 1979, he could not get backing for it.
Now, almost 30 years on, post 9/11 and post-Hurricane Katrina, global forces have made it imperative that the idea be translated into reality, and Dr Fowler was given the job of making it so.
He pitched the idea to the Norwegian government – he was working there at the time and realised the country was ideally placed to house the collection – and it agreed.
Dr Fowler said: "We needed it to be remote because we wanted it far from the troubles of the world.
"We also needed it to be accessible because we needed to take seeds in and probably some day move them out. And we needed a stable government. We needed a government trusted internationally or no-one would use our insurance policy."
The team went through the Svalbard site, looking at temperature, radiation and sea levels, and realised if there was a perfect location, they had found it.
The proposal was submitted to architects, who came up with the design to be unveiled today. It cost 50 million kroner, or about £6.25 million, and in accordance with Norwegian government funding regulations, it features a piece of public art.
Dr Fowler said: "It's beautiful. When you enter the doors you're looking down a tunnel about 100 metres long. There are a number of security features before you even get into one of the vault rooms."
"It's not a time capsule," said Dr Fowler. "We don't lock the door and walk away. It's a living institution.
"We need it because crop diversity is terribly important and because it is threatened, and we simply cannot afford to be losing this diversity."
GENE BANKS BY NUMBERS-10C and -20C
Ideal gene bank temperatures
1,400
Number of gene banks worldwide
464,000
Number of seed samples in US gene bank
6.5 million
Approximate number of samples at all gene banks
4.5 million
Number of samples Svalbard global seed vault has capacity for
20,000 years
Lifespan of at least one type of frozen seed
20-100 years
The time seed samples will be stored at Svalbard before being refreshed
SCOTS' SEEDS OF HOPEALTHOUGH Scotland has so far not made any deposits in the Doomsday Vault, the country's leading scientists have been in talks with the team behind it.
The Scottish Crop Research Institute – a world leader in potato research – is looking at working with Prof Fowler and his colleagues.
Pete Iannetta, a molecular ecologist, works on wild flowers from which many crops are historically born. He is keen for the stock of the Doomsday Vault to take these in.
A spokeswoman for the Scottish Government said although it had not been contacted directly to contribute yet, it would be happy to help.
She added that ministers were expecting the Norwegian team to be in touch in the future.
The full article contains 985 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
