On a windswept Arctic island 1000 kms from the North Pole, a group of Norwegian engineers and scientists have been constructing a gigantic seed bank inside a frozen mountain. To be managed by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, a group dedicated to the ongoing diversity of plants through a variety of genetic strains, the International Seed Bank will open this week. Known as the Doomsday vault, the seed bank has the capacity to hold 4.5 million batches of seeds from all known varieties of the planet's main food crops -- more than "...twice as many varieties of agricultural crops as we think exist," says Dr Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust and project mastermind. The Daily Green: Doomsday Seed Bank Opens This Week. High Plains Journal: ARS contributes seeds to Global Storage Vault in Norway.