Oh all right, I'll do it.. Svalbard Global Seed Vault - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia You can see that there are seed banks all over the place, and Svalbard (now betterly spelled) is meant as a safety net behind them. Other seed banks to active breeding things, which means growing in addition to freezing. Svalbard just sits there, mostly. Other seed banks have had misadventures in the past, and as you can see here as well Global seed bank opens ‘doomsday vault’ to deliver Syrian varieties to safety they are mostly not about war (sigh) I have only visited one seed bank. In tropical Asia with mean annual air T of 22 oC, and with rooms inside as low as -20 oC. You could imagine how long it would survive without lots of electricity.
Whenever we feel depressed about humans (maybe) rushing towards catastrophe, the entire seed-banking thing is good medicine. It has a long history and substantial breadth. Not devastatingly expensive (at scales presently practiced). That it has much to do with war troubles me, mostly in regard to the inverse argument: In a peaceful world. we'd not need it. This is incorrect. Climate always bops around, even with constant CO2 (at the scale of annual plants, it makes more sense to talk about weather and that bops around even more). Plants grown in monoculture are tasty targets not just for humans. Fungi and nematodes come to mind. A future with reduced availability of human food is not what y'all want. So, seed-banking and related plant-genetics research is what y'all want. This is an example of humans being unusually smart. You shall all feel good about it, and AustinG shall get off my lawn.
Will Bonsall is not getting any younger either. He has been forced to cut back on his unique collection and the entire project really needs to be "backed-up" in case his health declines. He has fabulous stuff but at the moment, most of it isn't grown anywhere else.
