Multiple Choice, Single Answer (Reading) — practice #rmcsa-010

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, carved into a frozen mountain on a remote Norwegian island, was built to safeguard the world's crop diversity against disaster. It functions as a backup for the thousands of regional seed banks that store the genetic material of food plants. Should a local collection be destroyed by war, fire, or funding cuts, duplicate samples held in Svalbard can be withdrawn to restore it. The vault's location was chosen for its natural cold and political stability; even without electricity, the surrounding permafrost would keep the seeds frozen for a long time. Depositing countries retain ownership of their samples, and only they may request their return. In 2015, Syrian researchers became the first to make a withdrawal, recovering seeds to rebuild a collection left inaccessible by conflict near the city of Aleppo.