The seed vault(种子地窖)
A lot of countries need different kinds of seeds so that they can plant them again. There is an important reason for this, Sometimes plants can't grow in a country because of bad weather or disease, so farmers need new seeds.
You can keep seeds in a" seed vault". It's a place at a special temperature. The seeds don't grow, but they can live for a long time. Norway has the biggest seed vault in the world ﹣the Svalbard Global Seed Vault﹣and it has seeds from a lot of different countries.
The vault is on the island of Spitsbergen. The island is about one thousand kilometers from the North Pole. It's a very cold place so it's good for seeds. Above the ground, the doorway is small, but inside, the building is huge. You walk down a long corridor (走廊), which is one hundred and thirty meters inside a mountain. At the end of it, there are three large areas with seeds.
There are about half a million kinds of seeds inside the vault. For example, there are kinds of seeds for rice from Asia and Africa, 32 kinds of seeds for potatoes from Ireland and seeds for different tomatoes from the USA.
The seed vault has space for a lot more seeds. You can put about 2.2 billion(十亿)seeds inside. The seeds can live here for thousands of years because of the cold temperature of ﹣18℃. So in the future, humans can grow any seed they want. In other words, the seed vault is the difference between life and death.
