special vault storing world's most precious seeds has now amassed over one million different plant varieties. It recently took delivery of consignment of seeds from 70,000 different crops. Global Seed Vault is buried deep in icy mountain in Arctic Circle area of Svalbard, Norway. It was started ten years ago to safeguard future of world's food supply. Climate change is causing more and more droughts around world, which are threatening different species of plants. vault holds back-ups of seed samples stored in other seed banks around world. Hannes Dempewolf, senior scientist at the Crop Trust, said: "Hitting million mark is really significant."
Workers at vault were not sure they would reach million mark so soon. The crisis in Syria meant there was shortfall of 90,000 seeds at vault. The latest delivery to vault included cereal staples. There were also more unusual crops like onion potato from Estonia and Bambara groundnut, which is being developed as drought tolerant crop in Africa. Marie Haga, executive director of Crop Trust, spoke about importance of the vault. She said: "Safeguarding such huge range of seeds means scientists will have the best chance of developing nutritious and climate-resilient crops that can ensure future generations don't just survive, but thrive."
