The Baekdudaegan National Arboretum Seed Vault Center

Image of the Baekdudaegan National Arboretum Seed Vault Center located in S. Korea

To protect wild plant species from climate change, deforestation, natural disaster, and other potential threats to wild plant species- The South Korean mountain tunnel(Baekdudaegan National Arboretum Seed Vault Center) was constructed in 2015.

With climate change getting worse than scientists predicted a decade ago, experts point out that Global warming rose by approximately 1°C pre-industrial levels because of unsustainable development. Indeed, the last decade had the highest temperature in 125,000 years. According to IPCC‘s sixth assessment report-Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis- in the recent 100,00 years, Earth has been experiencing fluctuation between glacial and interglacial periods. However, the last decade was the warmest in the multi-century period.

To prevent wildlife plants from extinction, the Baekdudaegan National Arboretum Seed Vault Centre holds 92,000 seeds from 4,700 different plant species. Located in only two places in the world, the Seed Vault receives seeds from all over the world and stores them for free. The vault is 600m above sea level and 46m underground located in Saebyeok-RI, Bonghwa-gun. Furthermore, it has 3 layers of iron plate, 60cm thick walls, and is earthquake resistant.

The Seed Vault maintains -20 Celsius with a relative humidity of 40% which is perfect for storing seeds. In this particular environment, the seed is not growing- when a certain species of the plant go extinct, the seeds are defrosted and reproduced.

Due to the recent pandemic, many people fear that there will be more deadly viruses in the near future. When new medications are produced, pharmaceutical scientists use many plants making the plant more valuable than previously before.

The other seed vault is located in Norway, called Svalbard Global Seed Vault runs slightly different from Baekdudaegan National Arboretum Seed Vault. The Svalbard Seed Vault mainly stores rice plants and wheat plants, focusing on food crises rather than wild plant species. There are many seed banks all over the world but there are only two Seed Vaults, one in South Korea and the other in Norway. The difference between a Seed Vault and a seed bank is that a Seed Bank is centered to study plants to grow more whereas Seed Vault protects plant species from going extinct. Thus, unless it is a very special case, it is rare that seeds leave the Seed Vault.