‘Noah’s Ark’ for world’s crop seeds to open soon

IN a cavern under a remote Arctic mountain, Norway will soon begin squirrelling away the world’s crop seeds in case of disaster.

Dynamited out of a mountainside on Spitsbergen island, around 1,000km from the North Pole, the store has been called a doomsday vault or a Noah’s Ark of the plant kingdom.

It is the brainchild of a soft-spoken academic from Tennessee in the US, who is passionate about securing food for the masses, and will back up seed stores around the world that are vulnerable to loss through war or disaster.