BONGHWA, South Korea — Hidden in a South Korean mountain
tunnel designed to withstand a nuclear blast, the seeds of nearly 5,000 wild
plant species are stored for safekeeping against
climate change, natural
disaster, and war.
اضافة اعلان
Plant extinction is progressing at an alarming rate,
researchers warn, driven by increasing human population, pollution, and
deforestation, even before many species are catalogued.
The Baekdudaegan National Arboretum Seed Vault Center
preserves nearly 100,000 seeds from 4,751 different wild plant species to
ensure they are not lost to “apocalyptic events”, says its head Lee Sang-yong.
It is one of only two such facilities in the world, he told
AFP: unlike more commonplace seed banks, where samples are stored and regularly
withdrawn for various purposes, deposits in seed vaults are meant to be
permanent, with use intended only as a last resort to prevent extinction.
The vault is designated as a security installation by South
Korea’s National Intelligence Service, surrounded by wire fences and dozens of
cameras, with restrictions on filming in place and police patrolling on a
regular basis.
Inside, a lift leads about eight floors down to a cavernous
concrete tunnel, where two heavy steel doors guard the storage room and its
hand-cranked shelving racks, kept at -20°C to preserve the seeds and 40 percent
humidity to keep them viable.
The vault’s samples are largely of flora from the Korean
peninsula, but with a capacity of two million seeds, the South makes its space
available to other countries, with Kazakhstan and Tajikistan among those to
have taken up the offer.
Depositors retain ownership of their samples and control
over withdrawals.
But Lee pointed out: “The seed vault stores seeds to prevent
their extinction, so the best scenario would be that the seeds never have to be
taken out.”
Despite its doomsday-defying role, it was built by a country
that in 1950 was invaded by the neighboring North, and Pyongyang has since
developed a nuclear and missile arsenal.
The facility was built in the “safest spot” in South Korea,
Lee said, designed to withstand a 6.9-magnitude earthquake and even an atomic
strike.
“It’s geographically very safe,” Lee said. “And we paved a
46 meter-deep underground tunnel to ensure it’s safe from war and nuclear
threats.”
‘Race against time’
The world’s biggest and best-known seed vault is buried deep
inside a former coal mine on Svalbard, a remote Arctic Norwegian archipelago around
1,300km from the North Pole.
Dubbed the “Noah’s Ark” of food crops, the Global Seed Vault
focuses on agricultural and related plants, storing more than one million seed
samples from nearly every country on the planet.
But researchers say preserving the seeds of wild plants —
the original source of the crops we eat today — should not be overlooked.
Many crop relatives in the wild that could provide genetic
diversity to help long-term food security “lack effective protection”,
according to a recent UN report.
It warned that farming was likely to be less resilient
against climate change, pests, and pathogens as a result, adding: “The
biosphere, upon which humanity as a whole depends ... is declining faster than
at any time in human history.”
Wild plants hold promise as future medicines, fuels, and
food, said the
Royal Botanic Gardens Kew in a report last year, but around
two-fifths of them are threatened with extinction, largely due to habitat
destruction and climate change.
It was a “race against time” to identify them before they
disappeared, it added.
Research on wild plant seeds is “lacking tremendously”, said
Na Chae-sun, a senior researcher at the Baekdudaegan National Arboretum.
She and her team collect samples and carry out a meticulous
and extensive process including X-ray tests and trial plantations before seeds
are catalogued and stored in the seed vault.
“One might ask why is that wild flower on the curbside
important?” she said.
“Our job is to identify these one by one and letting people
know how important they are,” she went on.
“The crops that we eat today may have come from that
nameless flower on the curbside.”
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