'Doomsday' seed bank opened

A 'doomsday' vault housing seeds from around the world has been set up on an Arctic archipelago.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, situated halfway between Norway and the north pole, has the capacity to store 4.5 million different seed samples.

Since each sample will contain on average 500 seeds, around 2,25 billion seeds may be stored there.

They are being held in the Arctic storage facility in case a future disaster wipes out food crops.

The location has been carefully chosen to provide maximum protection to the seeds.

The underground vault has been built as a 120 metres long tunnel inside a mountain, at about 130 metres above sea level, and permafrost and the thick rock will ensure that the samples remain frozen, even without electricity.

According to the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which is one of the three organisations running the project, seeds are vulnerable to a range of threats, such as "civil strife, war, natural catastrophes, and more routinely but no less damagingly, poor management, lack of adequate funding and equipment failures".

Cary Fowler, the Trust's Executive Director, said prior to the creation of the vault, when there were accidents or disasters or wars, the samples were destroyed, "dead as a dinosaur".

The Norwegian government and the Nordic Gene bank are also involved in the management and financing of the project.

© Independent Television News Limited 2008. All rights reserved.

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