The underground vault that treasures all the seeds of the world.

Svalbard Global Seed Vault is located in the remote Norwegian archipelago of the same name and protects the plant heritage of humanity. It is a security vault that contains almost a million seeds and more than 12,000 years of history.

On an Arctic mountain on a Norwegian island and 1,400 km from the North Pole, the hope of the planet beats: a seed bank that preserves the genetic diversity of edible plants from almost the entire world. The Svalbard Seed Vault is near Longyearbyen, the last city north of the globe. It is one of the most inhospitable places, where temperatures in summer do not exceed five degrees.

The vault houses the universal germplasm bank, a security warehouse that protects 40% of food diversity and guards almost one million seeds of 5,128 species from 233 countries. Its content is nothing less than the most palpable testimony of the 12,000 years of human agricultural history.

The DNA of the planet is registered in that vault. The largest number of stored seeds are crop varieties of rice, wheat and barley. The numbers for diversity are staggering: more than 150,000 different samples of wheat and rice, and close to 80,000 of barley. Some 50,000 varieties of sorghum, 40,000 species of Phaseolus beans, about 35,000 of corn and about 25,000 of soybeans, among many others. In Svalbard, artificially created seeds, such as those patented and sold by large companies, are not kept.

The bunker.

The vault is a type of bunker built to withstand the passage of time and eventual natural or man-made disasters. The facilities are built on a huge concrete structure built for the purpose of "safe warehouse". While it is true that at first the possibility of using the facilities of the Longyearbyen coal mine was evaluated, this idea was discarded because it implied the presence of hydrocarbon gases that threatened the safety of the initiative.

Security and maintenance are controlled remotely and only workers circulate. Visitors are not received. However, tourists often flock to the rectangular entrance portal to take a selfie with Perpetual Repercussion, the entrance artwork that has become a global icon. The creation of the Norwegian artist Dyveke Sanne plays with arctic lights, by combining stainless steel, mirrors and prisms cut into triangles of various sizes to reflect the midnight sun in summer and do the same in the polar night, with a net fiber optic that emits white and turquoise blue lights that shine in the mirrors.