[ti:Norway to Invest Millions to Improve Arctic Seed Vault] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]更多听力请访问51VOA.COM [00:00.20]Norway has announced it will spend 100 million Norwegian crowns, [00:06.68]or $13 million, to make improvements to a special seed vault in the Arctic. [00:15.18]The Norwegian government built the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in 2008 [00:22.36]to store seed samples of the world's crops and plants. [00:28.08]The vault serves as a natural deep freeze, [00:32.96]and is meant to protect important genetic material [00:37.48]in case of a major man-made or natural disaster. [00:43.04]It holds seed varieties of crops from around the world, [00:48.28]including corn, rice and grains. [00:52.56]The vault received its one-millionth seed sample [00:57.72]on February 26, its 10th anniversary. [01:02.96]It has the ability to hold about 2.5 billion seeds in total. [01:10.76]The vault is located on an island about 1,000 kilometers from the North Pole. [01:19.08]The samples are buried deep below a mountain. [01:24.08]Svalbard was chosen as the site of the seed bank, [01:28.60]in part, because of the area's permafrost [01:32.64]– a thick layer of soil that stays frozen throughout the year. [01:39.12]It makes for excellent underground cold storage. [01:44.44]But in late 2016, the permafrost began to unexpectedly melt. [01:52.20]This caused water to flow into the entrance of the vault tunnel. [01:58.08]Officials said the seeds were never in danger. [02:03.20]However, the event raised concerns about the need to better protect the samples. [02:10.72]Norway's Agriculture Ministry said improvements to the vault [02:16.60]will include a new entry tunnel. [02:20.04]They also include construction of a service building for emergency power and cooling units [02:27.20]and electrical equipment that might send heat through the tunnel. [02:32.14]Jon Georg Dale is Norway's minister of agriculture and food. [02:39.68]He announced the plans. [02:42.40]He said they will help the vault continue to be a secure storage area. [02:48.68]"It is a great and important task to safeguard all the genetic material [02:55.16]that is crucial to global food security," he said. [02:59.94]The Svalbard vault acts as a backup to many of the world's seed banks. [03:06.88]In 2015, researchers took out seeds from the vault [03:12.84]to help build seed collections in Lebanon and Morocco. [03:18.48]Those sites were set up to protect materials from an important seed bank in Aleppo, Syria, [03:26.20]which was damaged by violence from the country's civil war. [03:31.72]The seeds were re-grown and returned to the Svalbard vault last year. [03:38.88]Dale said such efforts show "that the seed vault [03:43.28]is a worldwide insurance for food supply for future generations." [03:48.80]I'm -Pete Musto. 更多听力请访问51VOA.COM