India has its own ‘Doomsday Vault’ for long-term storage of crop seeds at a permanently frozen mountain in western Himalayas. It is the second such seed bank in the world after the one at Norwegian Arctic island of Svalbard.
Nestled 17,500 feet high on a cliff top in the Himalayas, Chang-La has the sub zero temperatures and low humidity necessary to suspend seed life for future generations.
The vault’s location, where temperatures range from at –4°C to –40°C with humidity below 20%, is the perfect natural setting for keeping seeds safe. The only other facility in India for long term storage of seeds is maintained in New Delhi by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) but that runs a huge electricity bill for refrigeration.
It is a site carefully chosen. It is far from rising seas and tectonic plate movement but around 75 km from the Leh aiport, it is close enough to human civilisation today to deposit the country’s agricultural heritage with ease.
India is a herbal garden. It is now getting threatened or endangered or extinct. There is a dire necessity to preserve this rich wealth of biodiversity, which exists in India to give it to the next generation. These seeds will be withdrawn for use in the event of some disaster wipes out crops and plant life in India or around the world.
Crop seeds, developed slowly and carefully over thousands of years, are not only the source of sustenance for humankind but the best repository of genetic material scientists can use to help develop food resistant to the vagaries of climate change. Transgenic cropping to ensure that our grains, pulse and vegetables can reproduce at high altitudes, in salty water, less water and high temperatures, is essential to provide future generations with the same opportunities of today, he says.
The Doomsday Vault currently holds 5,000 seeds of vegetables and crops developed and grown by the defence scientists themselves but its total capacity is much more and ICAR, and other agencies and institutions can make use of this national facility for storing duplicates of their seed collections.
Syria this week became the first country to make a withdrawal form the Doomsday Seed Vault in the Arctic prompted by the unrest and Civil war in the country.
