'Seeds of Time' Trailer from Hungry, Inc. Visit the documentary’s website to learn more. It tracks the history and mission of the vault and its founder Cary Fowler. Visit the website of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.īy the way, earlier this year, a new documentary film about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened in theaters. The 138 black boxes stacked on trolley carts and transported out of the vault contained a precious resource - seeds, that researchers hope will restore some of the genetic diversity lost during the Syrian conflict. PBSNewsHour reported on October 19, 2015: This was the first of what they say will be “several shipments” over the next few years.

On October 19, the seeds were delivered to Lebanon and Morocco, where the nonprofit will continue the research started in Syria. Now, researchers have taken 38,000 seeds back out of the vault.

Some were stored in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas – which promotes agriculture in developing countries – ran a major seed bank near Aleppo, Syria until 2012, when rebel forces took over that area.īefore the nonprofit shut down its Aleppo operation, researchers there were able to transfer thousands of seed samples from Syria. A nonprofit organization in Syria had originally stored the seeds in the Arctic vault. Since then, researchers there have been storing containers of seeds from all parts of the globe in the vault, and this is the first time they’ve removed seeds.Īccording to the seed vault’s website, all seed samples in the vault remain the property of the gene banks that deposit them. The seed vault – located in Norway, sometimes called the Doomsday Vault – was built in 2008. | Svalbard Global Seed Vault.Įarlier this month (October 19, 2015), seeds deposited in 2012 from war-torn Syria became the Svalbard Global Seed Vault’s first-ever withdrawal.

Seed vault