What are seed banks and why are they important?

The answer

Seed banks are facilities that preserve plant genetic material for conservation, research, and food security. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault on a remote Norwegian archipelago stores over 1.2 million seed samples from nearly every country, kept at minus 18 degrees Celsius inside a mountain designed to withstand natural disasters and even nuclear war. Seeds can remain viable for centuries or even millennia under proper conditions; a 2,000-year-old Judean date palm seed, discovered at Masada in Israel, was successfully germinated in 2005. Seed banks are critical because approximately 40% of the world's plant species are currently threatened with extinction, and preserved genetic diversity could be essential for developing crops resilient to climate change, disease, and future agricultural challenges.