Norway opens' safe the end of the world 'to protect seeds
The BBC Brazil
A safe to shelter seed of all varieties known in the world of plants with food value is being inaugurated in Norway, now in the Arctic Circle.

Named for the "safe the end of the world," the fund-Fort International Seeds, a joint venture in Norway and the UN, was built on a remote island, Svalbard, in a partnership between the Norwegian government and the United Nations (UN).

The box-strong, which began to be built in March 2007, is at a depth of 120 meters inside the mountain of Spitsbergen, one of the four islands that make up Svalbard.

The director of the project, Kerry Fowler, said that the initiative aims to safeguard the world agriculture in the event of future disasters such as wars nuclear, fall of asteroids and climate change.

"This is the plan B, the network security, the policy of insurance. And we know that much of the diversity is being lost even in good genetic banks," he said.

Billions

To build a safe inside the mountain, the permanently frozen soil would continue to provide natural cooling in the event of system failure mechanic, explained Fowler.

The Box-Fort International Seeds is three cameras with the capacity to store 4.5 billion samples of seeds.

Professor Tore Skroppa, director of the Institute of Forests and Landscape of Norway, who also participates in the project, said that climate change is one of the reasons for the creation of the seed bank, but not the only one.

The teacher told the BBC correspondent in Svalbard, Sarah Mukherjee, which more than 40 countries took part or all of their banks seed destroyed in recent years. Whether because of the war, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, or because of flooding or other natural disasters, such as the Philippines.

Although the safe Norwegian has been designed to protect species of catastrophic events, it can also be used as a source of feedback from banks seed nationals.