Storing seeds in a secret place for the future is not any fable but a reality. The seeds from India will be stored in a secret place near North Pole to save them for the future.
Four seeds would be stored in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in the crucial 100 year old experiment. The seeds are saved in the vault to test its resilience. This is aimed at providing future generations information about the viability of seeds and the importance of regeneration to keep up with vitality.
Gene banks of six global research institutions including International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) is involved in this 100-year experiment. The Global Seed Vault is located deep inside a mountain on a remote island in the Svalbard archipelago, which lies between mainland Norway and North Pole.
seeds from India are chickpea, groundnut, pearl millet and pigeon pea.
ICRISAT’s RS Paroda Gene bank head Vania Azevedo said the experiment could prove crucial for effective restoration of food resources./ She said that data from seeds of 13 crops, four of which will be provided by ICRISAT’s gene bank in India, will be collected during the experiment.
The seeds from India are chickpea, groundnut, pearl millet and pigeon pea. These seeds would be first tested before stored in vaults at -18 degree Celsius, she said and added that these seeds would be taken out once every decade in the 100 year period to determine longevity.
Seeds to be stored in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in the crucial at -18 degree Celsius,
The first set of barley, pea, wheat and lettuce seeds produced by the German gene bank IPK in Gatersleben were deposited in the vault. The ICRISAT said that six institutions would be putting seeds in the vault over a period of six years.
The other institutions that provide seeds are National Rice Seed Storage Laboratory for Genetic Resources, Thailand ( rice), Instituto Nacional de Investigação Agrária, Portugal, (maize, and Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária, Brazil (soybean).
