![]() ICARDA has its own evocations: not an apocalyptic future but the grain-basket past of the “fertile crescent”. It is this region that is known as the origin of agriculture: archaeological studies of Mesopotamia indicate the spread of agriculture has its origins here, with seed cultivation occurring over 10,000 years ago. Each of those 15 research centres are global specialists in a particular research area, and for ICARDA, it is the agriculture of the arid regions. The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, ICARDA, one of 15 groups that form the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers ( CGIAR) was formerly headquartered in Aleppo, Syria. This seed wealth, in accordance with the Treaty, is widely shared. And for many of the genebanks represented here, these are not the only back-ups. And it’s that last as much as those other three that have brought about the latest doomsday headlines for the SGSV.įor Nordgen, the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre, the seeds held in the SGSV are its third stream: they have an “active” collection at their headquarters in Malmo, Sweden, that are distributed on request to farmers, breeders or hobbyists and a back-up in storage in Denmark. What threatens it? Three of the horsemen of the apocalypse, for a start: drought, disease, war. So ‘Doomsday’ is a cipher for a world in which that goal is threatened. The SGSV’s mission is to support the International Plant Treaty’s aims in conserving, securing and sharing the world’s plant genetics for food and agricultural security. They certainly distract from the real work of the vault, and its feeder institutions: the world’s agricultural and crop genebanks. But these apocalypses distract from the here-and-now. Most of the reports of the withdrawal noted that SGSV is built to withstand nuclear war. ![]() ![]() It made its way into most of the headlines that reported the first withdrawal from the vault since its inception in 2008, made by a formerly Syrian-based regional genebank in September 2015. Doomsday is the worst case scenario that it’s easiest to go to.
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