The project is also financing the deposit of samples from the international collections of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). The Trust is currently supporting more than 100 institutes worldwide to regenerate unique accessions and deposit a safety duplicate sample in the Vault. The Trust is therefore committed to supporting ongoing operational costs, and is assisting developing countries with preparing, packaging and transporting samples of unique accessions from their genebanks to the Arctic. The Trust considers the Vault an essential component of a rational and secure global system for conserving the diversity of all our crops. The Vault is managed in partnership between the Trust, Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen) and the Government of Norway. The Vault’s construction was funded by the Norwegian government as a service to the world, and Norway also contributes an annual sum towards its operation.
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Permafrost and thick rock ensure that, even without electricity, the samples remain frozen. For nearly four months a year the islands are enveloped in total darkness. Remote by any standards, Svalbard’s airport is in fact the northernmost point in the world to be serviced by scheduled flights – usually one lands a day. Svalbard is a group of islands nearly a thousand kilometres north of mainland Norway. The Vault is dug into a mountainside near the village of Longyearbyen, Svalbard. However, it was only with the coming into force of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, and with it an agreed international legal framework for conserving and accessing crop diversity, that the Vault became a practical possibility. The Seed Vault is an answer to a call from the international community to provide the best possible assurance of safety for the world’s crop diversity, and in fact the idea for such a facility dates back to the 1980s.
![seed vault seed vault](https://www.grahamktm.com/productimages/116557-Speed-and-Strength-2019-Spellbound-Womens-Motorcycle-Textile-Jacket.png)
Unique varieties of our most important crops are lost whenever any such disaster strikes: securing duplicates of all collections in a global facility provides an insurance policy for the world’s food supply. The world's seed collections are vulnerable to a wide range of threats - civil strife, war, natural catastrophes, and, more routinely but no less damagingly, poor management, lack of adequate funding, and equipment failures.