2021 | 2022
Svalbard Global Seed Vault
Spitsbergen - Norway
Longyearbyen is home to one of the most important buildings in the world. The seeds in the cold mountain halls is an insurance for the food supply of the future generations.
In 2004, Noreg commissioned an international research organization to establish a safe storage facility for seeds in Spitsbergen. The permafrost in the mountains, the good infrastructure, and the trust Noreg has gained as a bridge builder working for genetic resources made Spitsbergen relevant for such a facility.
Global seed nitrogenation in Svalbard was completed in 2008. At the foot of Platåfjellet in Longyearbyen, there is the capacity to store 4.5 million seed samples. Currently, seed samples from more than 4,000 plant heritages are located there.
In 2018, Statsbygg began rehabilitating the access tunnel to Frøkvelvet. The steel structure was replaced with a powerful and watertight concrete structure. Freezing islands around and in the excavation form an ice wall that helps the permafrost to stop the temperature. The access tunnel was fully rehabilitated in 2019. DOYMA designed and created for this unique project, a custom-made, non-centered sealing system for a core bore of 3867 mm. The largest sealing system in the form of a custom design DOYMA has ever manufactured.
The system on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen, which belongs to Norway, is thus a kind of biological safe deposit box for mankind. Barely more than 1000 kilometers from the North Pole, stored in the eternal ice.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
130 m deep in the mountain stores the seeds of the whole world
Behind a gray concrete entrance slumbers the backup copy of global crop diversity. The Global Seed Vault was established in 2008 in the perpetual ice of Spitsbergen in order to be able to replenish humanity's food supply in the event of a global catastrophe, if necessary with genetic material from the Arctic seed vault.