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Monday, September 24, 2007

 

Vault in Fort Collins part of national security

‘The building is protected by access codes, cameras and even tornado-proof walls. So what’s inside?

The answer is plant seeds. Billions of them. In fact, there are around 370,000 different species accounted for in the vault.

For each species, 3,000 seeds are placed in a sac.

“All the storage sacs are bar coded. Also, they’re labeled with the name of the type of plant material that’s in each of these sacs,” said Harvey Blackburn, who is the acting director of the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation.

The next question might be, why? The answer has to do with national security.’




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