Sharon Ede www.magethenovel.com © 2023 all rights reserved
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ONCE THEY HAD made their way down a metal tunnel and through the security doors, Jostein gave Ambra a brief tour of the Seed Vault.
The vault consisted of three storage chambers carved out of the permafrost.
Jostein led Ambra into the middle chamber, the only one currently in use, lined with shelving and stacked with hundreds of plastic boxes, all labelled and barcoded.
‘This facility took two years to build. It was opened in 2008 and paid for entirely by the Norwegian government. It contains over a million different packets of seeds of nearly 6,000 different species, each an important variety of a crop, stored at a constant temperature of -18C,’ explained Jostein.
‘Are these seeds only food crops, or all kinds of plants?’ asked Ambra, craning her neck to read the labels on the boxes that identified the seeds’ countries of origin.
