
Syrian war spurs first withdrawal from 'doomsday' Arctic seed vault - bootload
http://www.smh.com.au/world/syrian-war-spurs-first-withdrawal-from-doomsday-arctic-seed-vault-20150921-gjrte0.html
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surge
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.

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akiselev
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...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Center_for_Agricultural_Research_in_the_Dry_Areas)

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OliverJones
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.

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

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scotty79
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?

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ghshephard
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)

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bootload
_" 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?

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icebraining
No, having multiple backups would also be more reliable.

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

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

~~~
baltoo
"Noone wants backup; They want restore."

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throwaway9375
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?

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pmx
They requested 130 of 325 boxes

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vtlynch
"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.

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freehunter
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?

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rtkwe
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.

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luso_brazilian
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/...](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Mosul,+Iraq/Beirut,+Lebanon/@34.7069182,39.9449429,7.5z/data=!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x40079464db1a88b9:0x9745d74edd0f0930!2m2!1d43.1640004!2d36.3566484!1m5!1m1!1s0x151f17215880a78f:0x729182bae99836b4!2m2!1d35.4954794!2d33.8886289!5i1)

