PA The exterior of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a "doomsday" vault in the Arctic, where thousands of seeds ranging from wild tomatoes from the Galapagos to pumpkins cultivated by Native American tribes are being stored. mirror.co.uk/
The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (or ICARDA), which was forced to relocate from the Syrian city of Aleppo to Beirut in 2012, requested almost 130 boxes out of the 325 it had deposited in the Svalbard vault, according to Reuters. ICARDA's temporary unit in the Lebanese capital was only partially functioning, and it needed these samples as part of "its role as a hub to grow seeds and distribute them to other nations," the news agency explained.
The organization's research in part focuses on cultivating crops that can cope with shifting climate patterns in particularly dry areas of Africa, the Middle East and Australia. This vital work was interrupted by the horrors of the Syrian conflict, which has leveled swaths of Aleppo, once Syria's most populous city and its economic center.
Some of the world's first grains and cereals are thought to have been cultivated in the Levant, including Syria's river valleys, a cradle of civilization now rent asunder by war.
Ishaan Tharoor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post. He previously was a senior editor at TIME, based first in Hong Kong and later in New York.washingtonpost.com
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Topic: Arctic ‘doomsday’ vault to open because of Syrian civil war (Read 624 times)