An Arctic "doomsday vault" intended to protect the world's food supply in the event of a major cataclysm has been drawn upon for the first time ever. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, as the bank is called, will return 130 of the 325 boxes of seeds that Syrian researchers had originally deposited, The Independent and Reuters report.
The International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas, originally housed in Aleppo, Syria, before the conflict forced it relocate to Beirut, Lebanon, will withdraw wheat, barley, and grasses seeds for study. The center's normal seed purveyor, a vault in Aleppo, has been badly damaged by the Syrian civil war and couldn't make its typical shipment. "Protecting the world's biodiversity in this manner is precisely the purpose of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault," a vault spokesperson told Reuters.
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