Syrian war spurs first withdrawal from 'doomsday' Arctic seed vault | Hacker News Reader

Syrian war spurs first withdrawal from 'doomsday' Arctic seed vault

smh.com.au

126 pointsbootload18 comments

Why don't they wait for the situation to stabilize there for a few years before they start replanting crops that are just as likely to fail or be destroyed? The war isn't even over.

If they're planting the crops elsewhere just to get something going now that is not in storage, to replant later in Syria, then it makes sense.

The organization that runs the Middle Eastern seed bank moved the location from Aleppo, Syria to Beirut, Lebanon in 2012.

The article doesn't explain it very well but this transfer is meant to restock an active agricultural seed bank, that distributes seeds to the region's farmers, from last resort cold storage. Once the seeds are planted and bred, more seeds will probably be sent back to cold storage to replenish what they took.

Edit: ICARDA [1], the requesting organization, is also decentralized by default with operations in almost a dozen countries so the seeds will be safe.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Center_for_Agr...

Holy mackerel. This war has led to the destruction of antiquities. Now it's threatening plants domesticated since ancient times. We humans think we hit a home run when we were born five feet from home plate!

Enough already.

When you say "enough already," which solution do you propose to end the war?

USA apologize to Asad and help him? Why do they hate him so much? I know he openly criticized USA international politics and prefers to be friends with Russia but is that enough to want him gone at such enormous cost?

Rather than going immediately to the Arctic seed vault, you would think that it would make more sense to have seed vaults a little more convenient - something like an L1 cache as compared to treating the Arctic Seed vault as main memory. (Or tape backup, if you will)

According to the article, they do just such a thing! The 'L1 cache' as you call it for middle eastern dry climate crops was in Aleppo, Syria, which is no longer able to perform its function of multiplying and redistributing the seed.

"Rather than going immediately to the Arctic seed vault, you would think that it would make more sense to have seed vaults a little more convenient"

Reliability over convenience?

No, having multiple backups would also be more reliable.

It's still good to test the main backup - untested backups are not backups.

Which reminds me, I should test our backups again...

"Noone wants backup; They want restore."

Sure, but who is going to pay for the multiple backup sites?

The whole point of having an Artic seed vault is passive failsafe: "Even if the power were to fail, the vault would stay frozen and sealed for at least 200 years."

As a nice benefit, since it's passive failsafe, it's also cheap to maintain.

Is this a request for the complete deposit of seeds bearing their distinct traits, thereby impacting the entropy of the seed reserve, or only a portion, thereby reducing but not draining distinct strains?

They requested 130 of 325 boxes

"ICARDA wants almost 130 boxes out of 325 it had deposited in the vault, containing a total of 116,000 samples."

Its possible that an entire population of one species' "archive" is being requested ,though hopefully they wouldnt do that because of the obvious risks.

It does seem like it would make more sense to wait until the conflict is over before getting the seeds? What's the chance that the seeds could be destroyed again before the conflict is over?

They moved to Beirut in Lebanon, they're fairly safe. Other than ISIS (which is on the opposite side and expanding east) the spill over from Syria is mostly economic and refugees instead of fighting.

They are not expanding East. Coming from Iraq and moving into Deir Ez Zour and then Palmyra it's basically the Mosul - Beirut suggested route [1] via Google Maps. They are at the doors of Aleppo and expanding in the suburbs of Damascus as we speak.

The situation there is very serious. There are many economic refugees in this migratory wave but I don't believe many of them are from Syria.

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Mosul,+Iraq/Beirut,+Lebanon/...

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