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52 T he little-known-to- the-public Svalbard Global Seed Vault boasts the world's greatest repository of seeds. It was unveiled a decade ago — in the northernmost inhabited spot on Earth with an airport — and stores in its vaults an astounding 850,000 seed varieties culled from 5,000 core agricultural crop species. That's just 18 percent of the vault's capacity. Each variety bears a load of 500 seeds stockpiled per sampling; this precious cargo is meticulously wrapped within aluminum packets bundled into boxes sited deep within the excavated mountainside of a Nordic island. This entire seed vault, designed to contain and preserve 4.5 million varieties — or some 2.5 billion individual seeds for centuries to come — is a multi- million-dollar hedge against a doomsday occurrence of a manmade or natural kind. There are approximately 1,750 seed repositories throughout the world, but this is the grand master of them all. Svalbard operates as the largest, most mythic, and least accessible. It's also the fi nal stop before plant extinction. It functions exclusively as a backup, duplicating the contents of what individual countries' seed banks are doing. Founded and primarily funded through the Norwegian Ministry of Agriculture and Food, Svalbard is the hard-drive recovery THE GOOD SEED BY CATHERINE D. ANSPON. PORTRAIT PAMELA FREEMAN. mechanism for the world's plant-based food supply. You won't fi nd species of zinnias and roses here; what's stored are the seeds of essential crops that fi gure throughout human history. In order of quantities, Svalbard stores wheat, rice, barley, sorghum, beans, corn, millet, chickpeas, kikuyu grass, and soybeans. Eggplant, lettuce, potatoes, peanuts, oats, alfalfa, and rye also number high on the list. Nearly every country on Earth is participating, and the seed vault does not stockpile any genetically modifi ed plant material. The place is distant and at the cold end of the planet and seems worthy of a pilgrimage. But don't plan one soon — unless you're bringing seed deposits approved by the Norwegian government, during one of the three times per year when the vault is cracked open. For the other 360 days, the facility is off limits, and unstaffed — a securely monitored frigid scientifi c icebox. All species stored at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault remain unopened and can only be withdrawn by its nation's or entity's depositors. Sequestered 100 meters deep within the permafrost, the vault lies at the rim of the Arctic Circle. As its website notes, it is "located in Longyearbyen, on the Spitsbergen Island, which is the largest island in the Svalbard Archipelago. Longyearbyen is considered to be the northernmost town in the world, situated at 78 degrees north [latitude]." Eight hundred miles from the North Pole, the seed vault maintains an ideal climate for future plant-life preservation. The thermostat is permanently set at minus 0.4 Fahrenheit. But Svalbard is not impervious t o c l i m a t e d i s a s t e r itself, despite being at an e l e v a t i o n where b o t h p o l a r i c e caps could melt and the seed vault would still be above the water line. When melting of the surrounding permafrost ensued in the spring of 2017, water encroached upon the entrance. This recent development necessitated the Norwegian government spending $13 million to make Svalbard's vault even safer from future global warming — installing pumps and runoff channels to funnel any rising waters caused by Arctic melts, and revamping its cavernous central tunnel. The operation is both transparent (featuring a highly detailed website, seedvault.no) and mysterious. Volunteering is not possible, as its ice-encased doors are hermetically sealed 99 percent of the time. The offi cial entities running the seed bank all sound very Big Brother. Joining the Norwegian Ministry of Agriculture A LOOK AT THE VAULT AT THE EDGE OF THE PLANET WHICH LIES 100 METERS DEEP WITHIN THE PERMAFROST PRESERVING CROPS FOR ALL MANKIND — AND THE TEXAS ARTIST WHO IS POETICALLY DOCUMENTING IT ALL. IMAGES COURTESY THE ARTIST AND MOODY GALLERY, HOUSTON. Dornith Doherty (right) with scientist Deanna DePietro at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Millbrook, New York