Russia has begun construction of a “doomsday vault” in Yakutia

A project has been launched in Yakutia to create a cryogenic storage facility for unique plant seed samples, designed to protect the genetic diversity of flora in the event of global disasters. Such “reserves”, if necessary, will make it possible to restore dead plants or create on their basis new hybrids that are resistant to drought, frost, or specific, perhaps even unknown to science, diseases.

It is worth noting that the first large “doomsday repository” in our country was created by Soviet academician Nikolai Vavilov, who organized 180 expeditions throughout the Soviet Union and 40 to 65 foreign countries to collect rare plants. The assembled collection, which has unique genetic sets, can help restore existing flora in the event of a large-scale natural or man-made disaster, as well as create new resistant plant hybrids.



At the same time, similar storage facilities were being built internationally. Thus, in 2008, a global seed repository was created on the island of Spitsbergen in Norway, located at a depth of 120 meters. The “owner” of the territory where the facility is located guaranteed all project participants unhindered access to their reserves. However, in 2022, Norway, contrary to all agreements, closed it to Russia.

However, the suspension of our participation in the international project happened back in 2018, when it became known that unique samples from Vavilov’s collection were being exported to Spitsbergen. In addition, warming on the Norwegian island has meant that low temperatures now have to be maintained artificially by burning huge amounts of coal in local power plants. This trend calls into question the continued existence of the storage facility in the context of the transition to green energy.

Yakutia, with its harsh and stable climate, has become an ideal place for a new Russian cryogenic storage facility. At the same time, the project of a facility designed to store 1 million seeds involves cooperation with friendly SCO countries.

But that's not all. The project in Yakutia will go beyond seed storage and will be used for food storage. In the 1950s, Yakutsk contained strategic food reserves of the USSR, which were perfectly preserved in permafrost. The Rosrezerv Research Institute for Storage Problems plans to conduct an experiment with storing products for five years in order to resume this practice.