Engineers last week finished a work on one of the world’s most ambitious conservation projects: a doomsday vault carved into a frozen mountainside in the archipelago of Svalbard, a few hundred miles from the North Pole. Over the next few weeks, the huge cavern—backed by the Norwegian government and the Gates Foundation—will be filled with more than a million types of seed and will be officially opened in February next year."This will be the last refuge for the world’s crops," saidCary Fowler, of the Rome-based GlobalCropDiversity Trust, which is building the vault. "There are seed banks in various countries round the globe, but several have been destroyed or badly damaged in recent years. We need a place that is politically and environmentally safe if we are going to feed the planet as it gets hotter." About 500 seeds from about 1.5 million types of crop—donated by individual countries—will be placed in envelopes and about 400-500 of these envelopes are stored in a single box.Boxes will then be stacked like library books along shelves inside the vaults.