Garden Detective

Aerial view of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault | Photo courtesy Cary Fowler/Global Crop Diversity Trust

When I start seeds indoors for my vegetable garden every spring, invariably some don't grow. Last year, I sowed an entire package of carrots and didn't get one viable plant.

What if those were the only seeds I had -- and there were no grocery stores? I'd be up a creek, I'm afraid, without the proverbial paddle.

To avert such a calamity should disaster strike, Norway has created a "Doomsday Vault," and placed within it 4.5 million seed samples from around the world. At a cost of $9.1 million, the concrete vault dug into the side of a mountain was built to withstand climate change, wars, natural disasters such as earthquakes, and nuclear attacks in order to protect those seeds, and will reside deep in the permafrost of an Arctic mountain. Its steel airlock doors ensure a tight seal.

Its aim? To make it possible to re-establish crops should they be obliterated or become extinct.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault will be officially inaugurated officially tomorrow, less than a year after crews started drilling for it in Norway's Svalbard archipelago.

Photo at left (courtesy Mari Tefre/Global Crop Diversity Trust) shows the inside of the Doomsday Vault.

But this isn't the first time anyone has thought of such a thing. There are some 1,400 other seed banks in the world. Svalbard is a Plan B of sorts, in case those others don't make it. A few have already bitten the dust: Seed banks in Iraq and Afghanistan have been destroyed by war, another in the Philippines was wiped out in a 2006 typhoon.

Though Norway owns the vault, each country that 'deposits' seeds will continue to own their contributions.

Armed guards protect against polar bears, but threats such as war aren't a likelihood in the isolated region, some 600 miles from the North Pole.

The vault is expected to last at least as long as Egypt's ancient pyramids.

It's good to know my carrots will have a backup.