The government of Norway is planning to build an unusual storage center on an island in the Arctic Ocean. The place would be large enough to hold about two million seeds. The goal is to present all crops known to scientists. The British magazine New Scientist published details of the plan last month. The structure will be designed to protect the world’s food supply against nuclear war, climate change and other possible threats. It will be built in a mountain on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen. The mountain is less than one thousand kilometers from the North Pole, the northernmost position on earth.
An international group called the Global Crop Diversity Trust is working on the project. The director of the group, Cary Fowler, spoke to New Scientist. He said the project would let the world rebuild agriculture if, in his word, “the worst came to the worst”. Norway is expected to start work next year. The project is expected to cost three million dollars. Workers will drill deep in the side of a sandstone mountain. Temperatures in the area never rise above 0ºC. The seeds will be protected behind concrete walls a meter thick and high-security door.
The magazine report says the collection will represent the products of ten thousand years of farming. Most of the seeds at first will come from collections at seed banks in Africa, Asia and Latin America. To last a long time, seeds need to be kept in very low temperatures. Workers will not be present al the time. But they plan to replace the air inside the storage space each winter. Winter temperatures on the island are about eigh degrees below 0ºC. The cold weather would protect the seeds even if the air could not be replaced.
Mr. Fowler says the proposed structure will be the world’s most secure gene bank. He says the plant seeds would only be used when all other seeds are gone for some reason. Norway first proposed the idea in the 1980s. But security concerns delayed the plan. At that time, the Soviet Union was meeting in Rome of the Food and Agriculture Organization.
小题1:The project is meant to ______.A．increase the world’s food output in the futureB．carry out some scientific experiments on plant genesC．protect crop seeds from dying out in case of possible disastersD．build an exhibition centre of the world’s plant seeds小题2:Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the above passage?A．The government of Norway will perform the project alone. B．Seeds to be collected there were produced ten thousands years ago.C．Spitsbergen is chosen because it is free of the threat unclear war forever.D．Temperature is a major consideration when choosing the storage place.小题3:We can infer from the text that _______.A．People will get newly-developed seeds from the center every year.B．The storage center will greatly promote world agricultureC．Norway had meant to build the storage centre about 20 years before.D．There haven’t been any seed storage centres in the world before.小题4:What is probably the best title of the passage?A．The Best Place to Store SeedsB．Noah’s Ark（）of Plant Seeds in PlanC．Concerns of World Food SupplyD．A New Way to Feed the World