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1．LONGYEARBYEN, Norway — With plant species disappearing at an alarming rate, scientists and governments are creating a global network of plant banks to store seeds and sprouts, precious genetic resources that may be needed for man to adapt the world’s food supply to climate change.
挪威朗伊爾城——隨著植物物種正在以駭人聽聞的速度滅絕，科學家和各國政府正在創建全球網絡性的植物庫來儲存種子和苗芽。人類可以利用這些珍貴的種芽資源確保充足的食物供應，以應對氣候變化。
2．This week, the flagship of that effort, the Global Seed Vault near here, received its first seeds, millions of them. Bored into the middle of a frozen Arctic mountain topped with snow, the vault’s goal is to store and protect samples of every type of seed from every seed collection in the world.
本周，作為這種不懈努力的旗艦機構，“全球種子地庫”接收了首批數百萬種的種子。該地庫建于北極的一座白雪皚皚的大山之中，其目標是儲存和保護世界各地收藏的各類種子樣本。
3．As of Thursday, thousands of neatly stacked and labeled gray boxes of seeds — peas from Nigeria, corn from Mexico — reside in this glazed cavelike structure, forming a sort of backup hard drive, in case natural disasters or human errors erase the seeds from the outside world.
截至周四，成千上萬個堆放整齊且貼有標簽的灰色種盒在上釉的洞穴式結構中安家落戶，如尼日利亞的豌豆、墨西哥的玉米。這些盒子就如已經備份了的電腦硬盤，以防世界上的植物物種會因自然災害和人為破壞而消失。
4．Descending almost 500 feet under the permafrost, the entrance tunnel to the seed vault is designed to withstand bomb blasts and earthquakes. An automated digital monitoring system controls temperature and provides security akin to a missile silo or Fort Knox. No one person has all the codes for entrance.
通往種子地庫的入口隧道，位于永凍帶下約500英尺處，其設計旨在防御爆炸和地震。自動化數字監控系統用于控制溫度并提供類似導彈發射井或福特諾克斯軍事基地的安全保障。任何人都不單獨擁有進入種子庫的全部密碼。
5．The Global Vault is part of a broader effort to gather and systematize information about plants and their genes, which climate change experts say may indeed prove more valuable than gold. In Leuven, Belgium, scientists are scouring the world for banana samples and preserving their shoots in liquid nitrogen before they become extinct. A similar effort is under way in France on coffee plants. A number of plants, most from the tropics, do not produce seeds that can be stored.
目前，世界上很多人士致力于收集種子及其種子基因的信息并使之系統化，全球種子地庫是這種全球性努力的的一個縮影。氣候變化專家稱，這些信息要比金子還要貴重。在比利時的魯汶，科學家正在搜集世界上的香蕉樣本并將香蕉芽保存在液體氮中，以防其滅絕。法國也正在進行類似的努力，保護咖啡物種。很多植物，大多數是來自熱帶地區的植物，無法通過種子繁殖，不能產生可供儲存的種子。
6．For years, a hodgepodge network of seed banks has been amassing seed and shoot collections in a haphazard manner. Labs in Mexico banked corn species. Those in Nigeria banked cassava. Now these scattershot efforts are being urgently consolidated and systematized, in part because of better technology to preserve plant genes and in part because of the rising alarm about climate change and its impact on world food production.
多年來，很多龐雜的種子庫網絡一直以隨意的方式收集種子和苗芽。例如，墨西哥的實驗室收藏玉米種，尼日利亞的實驗室收藏木薯種。現在，正對這些分散的努力進行亟需的整合和系統化操作。之所以可以這樣做，部分原因是儲存植物基因技術的更新，部分原因是氣候變化的警鐘繼續長鳴及其對世界糧食產量的影響。
