The global seed bank built into an Arctic mountainside has approved the first withdrawal from its vaults, to help a research agency displaced by civil war in Syria, says Reuters. The 130 boxes of samples will be returned to the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas. ICARDA moved its headquarters to Beirut in 2012 because of the war in Syria. It kept its seed bank in Aleppo, but that facility is unable to maintain its role as a hub to grow seeds and distribute them to other nations due to the ongoing fighting, said Reuters.
ICARDA sent 325 boxes containing 116,000 samples to the global seed bank, which has a total of 860,000 crop samples from throughout the world. The seeds requested by ICARDA have drought-resistant traits.