The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a secure facility built deep inside a mountain on the Norwegian Arctic island of Spitsbergen. The vault stores duplicate s...

(a)(i) Ex-situ conservation is the preservation of species outside their natural habitat [1]. Examples include seed banks (such as the Svalbard vault itself), zoos, botanic gardens and captive breeding centres. The organisms or genetic material are removed from the wild and maintained in controlled conditions to prevent extinction.

(a)(ii) One example of in-situ conservation [1]:

• Establishing a national park or nature reserve where species are protected in their natural environment.

Other valid answers include: creating a marine protected area, or designating a wildlife corridor to protect habitat connectivity.

(b) Two features of the seed vault that help keep seeds at low temperature [1 each, max 2]:

1. The vault is built deep inside a mountain (120 m below the surface), surrounded by thick rock that provides natural insulation against temperature changes.
2. The surrounding permafrost keeps the temperature naturally below freezing, providing a backup to the electrical cooling system. Even if the power fails, the seeds remain frozen.

Other valid answers include: the long access tunnel (130 m) and airlock chamber that prevent warm outside air from reaching the storage areas, or the refrigeration equipment that maintains the vaults at minus 18 degrees C.

(c) From Table 1, wheat has the highest number of stored samples with 152,000 seed samples [1]. Wheat is stored in the greatest quantity because it is the most widely grown cereal crop globally, cultivated in 78 contributing countries, and maintaining its genetic diversity is critical for global food security.

(d) Maintaining genetic diversity in crop plants is important for food production because:

1. Breeding for new challenges: Genetic diversity allows plant breeders to develop new crop varieties with traits such as disease resistance, drought tolerance or higher yields to meet changing conditions and future agricultural challenges [1].
2. Disease resistance: If a major crop disease or pest outbreak occurs, genetic diversity ensures that some varieties carry natural resistance and can be used to replace vulnerable strains. Genetically uniform crops are extremely vulnerable to being wiped out by a single disease [1].
3. Climate adaptation: As climate change alters growing conditions (temperature, rainfall patterns, growing seasons), crops with diverse genetic traits are more likely to include individuals that can tolerate the new conditions [1].

(e) Climate change threatens the genetic diversity of wild plants through:

1. Habitat shift: Rising temperatures may shift the climate zones that particular plant species are adapted to, forcing them to migrate to cooler areas or higher altitudes to survive [1].
2. Extinction risk for trapped species: Species that cannot migrate quickly enough, or that are already at the tops of mountains or the edges of continents, face extinction as their habitat becomes unsuitable and they have nowhere to move to [1].
3. Extreme events: Changes in rainfall patterns, more frequent droughts and extreme weather events can destroy populations of wild plants, reducing the genetic diversity available within each surviving species [1].

(f) Two advantages of the Svalbard vault compared to national seed banks alone [1 each, max 2]:

1. The vault is located in an extremely remote and politically stable region, providing protection against the wars, natural disasters or political instability that could destroy a national seed bank (as happened with Syria's gene bank in 2015).
2. The permafrost and mountain rock provide natural cold storage as a backup, so seeds would remain frozen even if all power supplies failed permanently.

Another valid answer: having a duplicate copy in Svalbard means that if a national collection is lost, the seeds can be recovered and the entire collection rebuilt.

(g) One limitation of seed banks for conserving plant biodiversity [1 for the limitation, 1 for explanation]:

1. Not all plants produce viable seeds for storage: Seed banks can only preserve species that produce seeds suitable for drying and freezing. They cannot conserve plants that reproduce vegetatively (such as bananas) or species whose seeds cannot survive the drying and freezing process (known as recalcitrant seeds) [1].
2. No ongoing evolution: Seeds preserved in isolation from the natural environment do not continue to evolve and adapt to changing conditions. When eventually planted, they may be less well suited to current environmental conditions than plants that have been adapting in the wild [1].

(h) Storing traditional crop varieties is important alongside modern commercial varieties because:

1. Local adaptation: Traditional crop varieties have been developed over centuries by farmers in specific local environments and may carry genes for resistance to local pests, diseases or environmental stresses that modern commercial varieties lack [1].
2. Vulnerability of modern varieties: Modern commercial varieties are often bred for high yield under ideal conditions and may be genetically uniform. This uniformity makes them vulnerable to widespread crop failure if conditions change or a new disease appears [1].
3. Future breeding resource: Preserving traditional varieties ensures that the widest possible range of genetic traits is available for future breeding programmes to draw upon. A trait that seems unimportant today may be critical for developing a new variety in the future [1].

(i) Using seeds from a seed bank to restore agricultural biodiversity after a natural disaster:

1. After a disaster such as a flood or drought that destroys crops, a country could request the release of stored seed samples of the affected crop varieties from the seed bank [1].
2. These seeds could be multiplied in protected growing facilities (nurseries or greenhouses) and then distributed to farmers to replant their fields, gradually restoring the agricultural diversity that existed before the disaster [1].

(j) International cooperation is needed to operate the global seed vault because:

1. The vault stores seeds from countries all over the world, so decisions about access, storage procedures and security must be agreed upon by many nations through international treaties and governance structures [1].
2. Funding for the construction, maintenance and operation of the facility comes from multiple governments and international organisations. No single country could sustain the vault alone; it requires coordinated financial support from the global community [1].