when was the svalbard global seed vault built
2006
title: Svalbard Global Seed Vault text: institutions. Svalbard Global Seed Vault ranked at No. 6 on "Time"s Best Inventions of 2008. It was awarded the Norwegian Lighting Prize for 2009. Each seed sample consists of approximately 500 seeds sealed in an airtight aluminum bag. The facility has a storage capacity of 4.5 million seed samples. Svalbard Global Seed Vault The Svalbard Global Seed Vault () is a secure seed bank on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen near Longyearbyen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago, about from the North Pole. Conservationist Cary Fowler, in association with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), started the vault title: Svalbard Global Seed Vault text: Svalbard Global Seed Vault The Svalbard Global Seed Vault () is a secure seed bank on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen near Longyearbyen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago, about from the North Pole. Conservationist Cary Fowler, in association with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), started the vault to preserve a wide variety of plant seeds that are duplicate samples, or "spare" copies, of seeds held in gene banks worldwide. The seed vault is an attempt to insure against the loss of seeds in other genebanks during large-scale regional or global crises. The seed vault is managed title: Svalbard Global Seed Vault text: vault was 967,216, representing over 13,000 years of agricultural history. Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland's prime ministers ceremonially laid "the first stone" on 19 June 2006. The seedbank is inside a sandstone mountain on Spitsbergen Island, and employs robust security systems. Seeds are packaged in special three-ply foil packets and heat sealed to exclude moisture. The facility is managed by the Nordic Genetic Resource Center, though there are no permanent staff on-site. Spitsbergen was considered ideal because it lacked tectonic activity and had permafrost, which aids preservation. Its being above sea level will keep the site dry even if title: Svalbard Global Seed Vault text: under terms spelled out in a tripartite agreement between the Norwegian government, the Crop Trust and the Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen). The Norwegian government entirely funded the vault's approximately ( in 2008) construction. Storing seeds in the vault is free to end users, with Norway and the Crop Trust paying for operational costs. Primary funding for the Trust comes from organisations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and from various governments worldwide. The Nordic Gene Bank (NGB) has, since 1984, stored backup Nordic plant germplasm via frozen seeds in an abandoned coal mine at Svalbard. In January title: Svalbard Global Seed Vault text: 2008, the Nordic Gene Bank merged with two other Nordic conservation groups to form NordGen. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault officially opened on 26 February 2008, although the first seeds arrived in January 2008. Five percent of the seeds in the vault, about 18,000 samples with 500 seeds each, came from the Centre for Genetic Resources of the Netherlands (CGN), part of Wageningen University, Netherlands. As part of the vault's first anniversary, more than 90,000 food crop seed samples were placed into storage, bringing the total number of seed samples to 400,000. Among the new seeds are included 32 varieties