![]() To begin replenishing the stock, there are greenhouses nearby where the seeds will be planted, grown and reproduced. So this had lived through natural selection for over hundreds of years," he said.Ī 10-minute drive away and just across the mountain range from Syria, a new vault is being built by ICARDA. "This is a source of desirable traits including drought tolerance, including heat tolerance, including resistance to disease and so forth. It is the plant from which the wheat we eat today originated 10 millennia ago. Solh carefully shakes out a few wisps of what looked like wheat out of a brown envelope. This is where the seeds INCARDA received back from Svalbard are being housed. ![]() Relocated to Lebanon, Solh opens the door to a vault on the Agricultural Research and Educational Center of the American University of Beirut campus in the Bekaa Valley. The ICARDA Aleppo center had sent nearly 80% of the seeds and samples to the Global Seed Vault as a back up by 2012, with its last deposit being in 2014.Īnd now, Solh and his ICARDA team have the challenge of keeping and reproducing one of humanity's most important collection of food crop genetic lines. "This is a rescue mission these seeds cannot be replaced" said ICARA representative Thanos Tsivelikas, who is overseeing the withdrawal from the vault. ICARDA needs to reconstruct its collection of genetic material stocks since it can no longer access its own vault in Aleppo and plant the lands around it.Īnd that is where the war in Syria connects to a remote seed vault in the Arctic. In this part of the world, many of the important crops were domesticated from the wild to cultivation." "And this is where the cradle of agriculture 10,000 years ago. "These are land races that were inherited from our grand-grand-parents, most of them are unfortunately extinct now," ICARDA Director General Mahmoud El-Solh said. ICARDA's gene bank in Aleppo, one of the most important in the world, includes more than 135,000 varieties of wheat, fava bean, lentil and chickpea crops, as well as the world's most valuable barley collection. ![]() The gene bank in Aleppo, run by the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, or ICARDA, houses an important collection of seeds gathered from around the Fertile Crescent and beyond. An important storehouse in the Fertile Crescent In the midst of one of the most congested areas in Aleppo sits a treasure trove of food crop genetic material made inaccessible by war. Rather, it was because of the most preventable of manmade disasters - war.ĭeath, devastation and unimaginable brutality have become the hallmark of the bitter civil war ravaging Syria. Coined the "Doomsday Vault," this bank operated by the Norwegian government is meant to be humanity's back-up in the event of a devastating catastrophe that decimates crops.īut that was not what caused scientists to have to dip in and make a withdrawal. Humanity has had to cash in on its insurance policy earlier than expected.ĭeep in the side of a mountain in the Arctic Archipelago is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |