this is a special place let's go deeper
inside we have prepared this seed wall
for about 4.5 million seed samples
[Music]
welcome to the global Seed Vault this is
a facility where we store copies of
seeds from gene banks all over the world
so now we are entering a long tunnel
which leads into the global seed walls
deep inside the permafrost mountain
close to the North Pole is a storage
facility with the capacity to store over
4 million different crops and a maximum
of two point five billion seeds the
global Seed Vault was created as a
backup system for the world's gene banks
to protect humanity against any
catastrophes that could potentially wipe
out our agricultural diversity
we are now quite deep in the mountain
when we pass this door we are in the
permafrost part of the rocks here now we
are moving from approximately zero
degrees into the permafrost section we
have the permafrost here minus five in
there it's minus eighteen and here you
can feel that this fear it's silent you
can hear the echo it's a very nice place
to grasp the atmosphere of being in an
important place some journalists call
this the Noah's Ark or plant diversity
and personally I think that's quite a
good name we call it the world's most
important room so let's go in if the
humanity can survive we will need new
plant varieties and the material you
need for developing new varieties our
genetic diversity we have seeds from all
countries in the world Kenya Mexico
India Hariri Germany Colombia Costa Rica
Zambia Brazil Australia here we have
some nice wooden boxes from Tajikistan
workers in gene banks farmers have
struggled to produce all these seeds and
sent them here because they feel safe
when let's send the seeds here so Albert
is a safe place the permafrost here so
it's frozen even if the artificial
cooling fails and so what is quite far
away from conflicts here we have boxes
from Russia and here we are have boxes
from Ukraine and even if they are
enemies abroad outside in this seed wall
they cooperate and here is some wooden
boxes made in North Korea so even North
Korea have sent seeds here and in the
seed world here international conflicts
are cooled down
[Music]
you see this empty space in this shelf
we had seed boxes from Mikado's gin Bank
in Aleppo
they sent seeds here from 2008 and when
the genebank in Aleppo was ruined we
were able to send this in fact so they
can start creating a new gene bank this
system saved the seeds if they had no
backup here the seeds have gone extinct
this is the world's largest collection
of genetic diversity of crops what you
see in here is 13,000 years of
agricultural history the genes we find
in here existed in the natural flora in
the Middle East and 15,000 years ago and
then farmers started to use these plants
and I improved the plants into the crops
that we have today there is in the sea
what about 70,000 different varieties of
barley and 150 thousand samples of rice
and 140 thousand samples of wheat
researchers I investigate what are the
properties defined in this older
varieties and I used genes for making
new varieties for new purposes for new
growing conditions without this material
plant breeders agricultural will never
manage to feed the growing population
this is the raw material that we need
for the future the breeders need to make
new varieties to increase the world's
food production the work gene banks do
every day conserving their seats
preparing the genes for future food
surprise is a very very crucial and
important work
I'm quite good feeling when I'm in here
and know that this is a resource that
the future will need seed goes extinct
everyday and personally it's a big
motivation to think about all the work
that has been done to bring the seeds
here and it feels very good to be a part
of this global effort for future food
supplies and conserve them in a safe
place
[Music]