Agriculture, also called farming or husbandry, is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi, and other life forms for food, fiber, biofuel and other products used to sustain human life. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby fa... Explore this topic

Crop diversity is the variance in genetic and phenotypic characteristics of plants used in agriculture. Crops may vary in seed size, branching pattern, in height, flower color, fruiting time, or flavor. They may also vary in less obvious characteristics such as their response ... Explore this topic

A seedbank stores seeds as a source for planting in case seed reserves elsewhere are destroyed. It is a type of gene bank. The seeds stored may be food crops, or those of rare species to protect biodiversity. The reasons for storing seeds may be varied. In the case of food cro... Explore this topic

Food security refers to the availability of food and one's access to it. A household is considered food-secure when its occupants do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. The USDA estimates the nearly 9 out of 10 U.S households were food secure throughout 2005. It is a mea... Explore this topic

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a secure seedbank located on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen near the town of Longyearbyen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago, about 1,300 kilometres from the North Pole. It was started by conservationist Cary Fowler in association ... Explore this topic

Svalbard is an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, constituting the northernmost part of Norway. Located north of mainland Europe, it is about midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole. The group of islands range from 74° to 81° north latitude, and from 10° to 35° east lo... Explore this topic

Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions, or in the distribution of weather around the average conditions. Cli... Explore this topic

Global warming is the rise in the average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans since the late 19th century and its projected continuation. Since the early 20th century, Earth's mean surface temperature has increased by about 0.8 °C, with about two-thirds of the increas... Explore this topic

Gene banks are a type of biorepository which preserve genetic material. In plants, this could be by freezing cuts from the plant, or stocking the seeds. In animals, this is the freezing of sperm and eggs in zoological freezers until further need. With corals, fragments are tak... Explore this topic

Global Crop Diversity Trust is an independent international organization which exists to ensure the conservation and availability of crop diversity for food security worldwide. It was established through a partnership between the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organizatio... Explore this topic