Arctic ‘doomsday' seed vault gets more than 14,000 new samples
COPENHAGEN: A 'doomsday' vault storing food crop seeds from around the world in man-made caves on a remote Norwegian Arctic island will receive more than 14,000 new samples on Tuesday, a custodian of the facility said.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, set deep inside a mountain to withstand disasters from nuclear war to global warming, was launched in 2008 as a backup for the world's gene banks that store the genetic code for thousands of plant species.
Protected by permafrost, the vault has received samples from across the world and played a leading role between 2015 and 2019 in rebuilding seed collections damaged during the war in Syria. 'The seeds deposited this week represent not just biodiversity, but also the knowledge, culture and resilience of the communities that steward them,' Executive Director Stefan Schmitz of the Crop Trust said in a statement.
The new contributions include a sample of 15 species from Sudan, consisting of several varieties of sorghum — a plant that is significant both for the country's food security and its cultural heritage, the Crop Trust said.
The war between the Rapid Support Forces and the army which broke out in April 2023 has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced 12 million, while plunging half of Sudan into hunger and several locations into famine.
'In Sudan ... these seeds represent hope,' the director of Sudan's Agricultural Plant Genetic Resources Conservation and Research Centre said in a statement.
A total of 14,022 new samples will be deposited at 1430 GMT, including seeds of Nordic tree species from Sweden and rice from Thailand, the Crop Trust said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Arab News
a day ago
- Arab News
Greenland ice melted much faster than average in May heatwave: scientists
COPENHAGEN: Greenland's ice sheet melted 17 times faster than the past average during a May heatwave that also hit Iceland, the scientific network World Weather Attribution (WWA) said in a report Wednesday. The Arctic region is on the frontline of global warming, heating up four times faster than the rest of the planet since 1979, according to a 2022 study in scientific journal Nature. 'The melting rate of the Greenland ice sheet by, from a preliminary analysis, a factor of 17... means the Greenland ice sheet contribution to sea level rise is higher than it would have otherwise been without this heat wave,' one of the authors of the report, Friederike Otto, told reporters. 'Without climate change this would have been impossible,' said Otto, an associate professor in climate science at the Imperial College London. The data from the May 15-21, 2025 heatwave was compared to the average ice melt for the same week during the period 1980-2010. In Iceland, the temperature exceeded 26 degrees Celsius (79 Fahrenheit) on May 15, unprecedented for that time of year on the subarctic island. 'Temperatures over Iceland as observed this May are record-breaking, more than 13 degrees Celsius hotter than the 1991-2020 average May daily maximum temperatures,' the WWA said. In May, 94 percent of Iceland's weather stations registered record temperatures, according to the country's meteorological institute. In eastern Greenland, the hottest day during the heatwave was about 3.9C warmer compared to the preindustrial climate, the WWA said. 'While a heatwave that is around 20 degrees Celsius might not sound like an extreme event from the experience of most people around the world, it is a really big deal for this part of the world,' Otto said. 'It affects the whole world massively,' she said. According to the WWA, the record highs observed in Iceland and Greenland this May could reoccur every 100 years. For Greenland's indigenous communities, the warmer temperatures and melting ice affect their ability to hunt on the ice, posing a threat to their livelihood and traditional way of life. The changes also affect infrastructure in the two countries. 'In Greenland and Iceland, infrastructure is built for cold weather, meaning during a heatwave ice melt can lead to flooding and damage roads and infrastructure,' the WWA said. In Greenland, the higher temperatures coupled with heavy rainfall can have numerous consequences on nature. In 2022, higher temperatures caused the permafrost to thaw, releasing iron and other metals into numerous Arctic lakes, it said. Health and hygiene can also be affected, as rural Greenlandic households often lack sewage systems.
Arab News
21-05-2025
- Arab News
Polar bear biopsies to shed light on Arctic pollutants
NORWAY: With one foot braced on the helicopter's landing skid, a veterinarian lifted his air rifle, took aim and fired a tranquilizer dart at a polar bear. The predator bolted but soon slumped into the snowdrifts, its broad frame motionless beneath the Arctic sky. The dramatic pursuit formed part of a pioneering research mission in Norway's Svalbard archipelago, where scientists, for the first time, took fat tissue biopsies from polar bears to study the impact of pollutants on their health. The expedition came at a time when the Arctic region was warming at four times the global average, putting mounting pressure on the iconic predators as their sea-ice habitat shrank. 'The idea is to show as accurately as possible how the bears live in the wild — but in a lab,' Laura Pirard, a Belgian toxicologist, told AFP. 'To do this, we take their (fatty) tissue, cut it in very thin slices and expose it to the stresses they face, in other words pollutants and stress hormones,' said Pirard, who developed the method. Moments after the bear collapsed, the chopper circled back and landed. Researchers spilled out, boots crunching on the snow. One knelt by the bear's flank, cutting thin strips of fatty tissue. Another drew blood. Each sample was sealed and labelled before the bear was fitted with a satellite collar. Scientists said that while the study monitors all the bears, only females were tracked with GPS collars as their necks are smaller than their heads — unlike males, who cannot keep a collar on for more than a few minutes. For the scientists aboard the Norwegian Polar Institute's research vessel Kronprins Haakon, these fleeting encounters were the culmination of months of planning and decades of Arctic fieldwork. In a makeshift lab on the icebreaker, samples remained usable for several days, subjected to controlled doses of pollutants and hormones before being frozen for further analysis back on land. Each tissue fragment gave Pirard and her colleagues insight into the health of an animal that spent much of its life on sea ice. Analysis of the fat samples showed that the main pollutants present were per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) — synthetic chemicals used in industry and consumer goods that linger in the environment for decades. Despite years of exposure, Svalbard's polar bears showed no signs of emaciation or ill health, according to the team. The local population has remained stable or even increased slightly, unlike parts of Canada, where the Western Hudson Bay group declined by 27 percent between 2016 and 2021, from 842 to 618 bears, according to a government aerial survey. Other populations in the Canadian Arctic, including the Southern Beaufort Sea, have also shown long-term declines linked to reduced prey access and longer ice-free seasons. Scientists estimate there are around 300 polar bears in the Svalbard archipelago and roughly 2,000 in the broader region stretching from the North Pole to the Barents Sea. The team found no direct link between sea ice loss and higher concentrations of pollutants in Svalbard's bears. Instead, differences in pollutant levels came down to the bears' diet. Two types of bears — sedentary and pelagic — feed on different prey, leading to different chemicals building up in their bodies. With reduced sea ice, the bears' diets have already started shifting, researchers said. These behavioral adaptations appeared to help maintain the population's health. 'They still hunt seals but they also take reindeer (and) eggs. They even eat grass (seaweed), even though that has no energy for them,' Jon Aars, the head of the Svalbard polar bear program, told AFP. 'If they have very little sea ice, they necessarily need to be on land,' he said, adding that they spend 'much more time on land than they used to... 20 or 30 years ago.' This season alone, Aars and his team of marine toxicologists and spatial behavior experts captured 53 bears, fitted 17 satellite collars, and tracked 10 mothers with cubs or yearlings. 'We had a good season,' Aars said. The team's innovations go beyond biopsies. Last year, they attached small 'health log' cylinders to five females, recording their pulse and temperature. Combined with GPS data, the devices offer a detailed record of how the bears roam, how they rest and what they endure. Polar bears were once hunted freely across Svalbard but since an international protection agreement in 1976, the population here has slowly recovered. The team's findings may help explain how the bears' world is changing, and at an alarming rate. As the light faded and the icebreaker's engines hummed against the vast silence, the team packed away their tools, leaving the Arctic wilderness to its inhabitants.
Arab News
05-05-2025
- Arab News
Europe launches a drive to attract scientists and researchers after Trump freezes US funding
PARIS:The European Union launched a drive on Monday to attract scientists and researchers to Europe with offers of grants and new policy plans, after the Trump administration froze US government funding linked to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.'A few years ago, no one would have imagined that one of the biggest democracies in the world would cancel research programs under the pretext that the word diversity was in this program,' French President Emmanuel Macron said at the 'Choose Europe for Science' event in Paris.'No one would have thought that one of the biggest democracies in the world would delete with a stroke the ability of one researcher or another to obtain visas,' Macron said. 'But here we are.'Taking the same stage at the Sorbonne University, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that the EU's executive branch would set up a 'super grant' program aimed at offering 'a longer-term perspective to the very best' in the said that 500 million euros ($566 million) will be put forward in 2025-2027 'to make Europe a magnet for researchers.' It would be injected into the European Research Council, which already has a budget of more than 16 billion euros ($18 billion) for der Leyen said that the 27-nation EU intends 'to enshrine freedom of scientific research into law' with a new legal act. As 'the threats rise across the world, Europe will not compromise on its principles,' she said that the French government would also soon make new proposals to beef up investment in science and month, hundreds of university researchers in the United States had National Science Foundation funding canceled to comply with US President Donald Trump's order to end support to research on diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as the study of than 380 grant projects have been cut so far, including work to combat Internet censorship in China and Iran and a project consulting with Indigenous communities to understand environmental changes in Alaska's Arctic terminated grants that sought to broaden the diversity of people studying science, technology and engineering. Scientists, researchers and doctors have taken to the streets in not mentioning the Trump administration by name, von der Leyen said that it was 'a gigantic miscalculation' to undermine free and open research.'We can all agree that science has no passport, no gender, no ethnicity, no political party,' she said. 'We believe that diversity is an asset of humanity and the lifeblood of science. It is one of the most valuable global assets and it must be protected.'Von der Leyen's drive to promote opportunities in Europe in the field of science and take advantage of US policy shifts dovetails with the way that she has played up the potential for trade deals with other countries since Trump took office in January and sparked a tariff war last former German defense minister, and trained doctor, vowed that the EU would also address some of the roadblocks that scientists and researchers face, notably excessive red tape and access to said that science and research must not 'be based on the diktats of the few.'Macron said that Europe 'must become a refuge' for scientists and researchers, and he said to those who feel under threat elsewhere: 'The message is simple. If you like freedom, come and help us to remain free, to do research here, to help us become better, to invest in our future.'
