An Arctic "doomsday vault" received 60,000 samples of seeds from around the world on February 25 as the biggest global crop reserve stocks up for a global catastrophe.

The seeds are to be deposited in the vault located inside a mountain near Longyearbyen on Spitsbergen Island in Norway's Svalbard archipelago, about 1,000 kilometers from the North Pole.

"As the pace of climate change and biodiversity loss increases, there is new urgency surrounding efforts to save food crops at risk of extinction," said Stefan Schmitz, who manages the reserve as head of the Crop Trust. "The large scope of today's seed deposit reflects worldwide concern about the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss on food production."

"But, more importantly, it demonstrates a growing global commitment from the institutions and countries that have made deposits today, and indeed the world, to the conservation and use of the crop diversity that is crucial for farmers in their efforts to adapt to changing growing conditions," he said.

Institutions are sending common as well as wilder varieties of grains from countries as diverse as Brazil, the United States, Germany, Morocco, Mali, Israel and Mongolia. 

The latest shipment will bring the stock to around 1.05 million seed varieties in three underground alcoves that form the vault, which is also known as Noah's Ark.

Aimed at safeguarding biodiversity in the face of climate change, wars and other natural and man-made disasters, the seed bank can hold up to 4.5 million batches, or twice the number of crop varieties believed to exist in the world today. It was launched in 2008 with financing from Norway.

Its usefulness was spotlighted during Syria's civil war when researchers were able to retrieve grains lost in the destruction of Aleppo from the vault duplicates in 2015. 

The countries and institutions that deposit seeds in the vault retain ownership over them and can retrieve them when necessary.

Paradoxically, the vault was itself hit by climate change. In 2016, water seeped into the vault's tunnel entrance due to permafrost melting as Arctic temperatures climbed unusually high. Norway has since financed work to insulate the vault from further effects of a warming and wetter climate, which scientists say is happening two times faster in the Arctic than elsewhere.

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