KEY POINTS:
The name alone makes it sound like a relic of the Cold War or something out of a Bond film. It is referred to as the "Doomsday Vault" and housed in an icy steel and concrete bunker, more than 100m inside the mountain permafrost of an Arctic archipelago.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is the latest attempt to create a latter-day Noah's Ark, or insurance policy, for the planet in the event of a catastrophe such as devastating climate change induced by global warming.
After decades of planning and construction work, the vault was due to open last night.
The world's first global seed bank, it can hold up to 4.5 million batches of seeds from all the known varieties of the planet's main food crops.
The vault cost €6 million ($11.26 million) to construct, and can withstand nuclear missile attacks and dramatic rises in sea levels.
The aim is to re-establish crops and plants should they disappear or be wiped out by major disasters.
Cary Fowler, of the Global Crop Diversity Trust which set up the project with Norway's Nordic Gene Bank yesterday described the vault as the "perfect place" for seed storage.
The vault is made up of three large, airtight, refrigerated cold-storage chambers in a long trident-shaped tunnel bored through a layer of permafrost into a mountain of sandstone and limestone on the archipelago.
Norway's Svalbard islands are 1000km south of the North Pole deep inside the Arctic circle. No trees grow on the archipelago, which is home to 2300 people. It was selected because of its inhospitable climate and remoteness. The average winter temperature on Svalbard is around - 14C. The vault is protected by high walls of fortified concrete, doors armoured with steel plate and a home guard of free-roaming polar bears.
"The facility is designed to hold twice as many varieties of agricultural crops as we think exist," said Mr Fowler.
"It will not be filled up in my lifetime nor in my grandchildren's lifetime, but at these temperatures, seeds for important crops like wheat, barley and peas can last for 1000 years."
The permafrost and rocks around the tunnels are meant to ensure the seeds remain frozen, even if the plant's refrigeration fails and global warming raises the outside temperature.
"It is an insurance policy for the planet," said Mr Fowler.
The vault will hold 250,000 seed samples.
Yet scientists involved say some of the world's biodiversity had already been lost as a result of war or natural disaster. Gene vaults have disappeared in Iraq and Afghanistan, and seed banks in the Philippines and Honduras fell to natural disasters.
DOOMSDAY VAULT
WHAT
A project to save the world's plants from a man-made disaster
WHERE
Norway's Svalbard's islands, near the North Pole
HOW MUCH
$11.26 million
HOW COLD
- 14C in winter.
- INDEPENDENT
