墨尔本PTE素材库——Seed Bank

墨尔本PTE素材库——Seed Bank

中文批注：

这篇报道主要介绍了位于北极地下的世界种子银行“末日种子库”，也叫“斯瓦尔巴全球种子库”。主要介绍了种子银行的功能，即储存来自世界各地的不同种类种子，以防发生任何毁灭性的灾难事件造成植物的彻底灭绝。目前仅澳大利亚一个国家在此储存的本土植物种子就多达20,000种，而包括澳大利亚在内的很多国家，还在继续向种子银行中继续添加其他种类的种子。

墨尔本PTE素材库，每一篇文章都力求与PTE官方的Question Criteria相吻合，实实在在帮助更多的PTE考生！整篇Seed bank视频和Full Transcript，包含了很多实用的单词和句法，是很好的听力练习材料。如果大家做dictation的时候发现有生词或者不理解的词组，都可以在听完整篇视频后，查看Full Transcript加以学习！

【Key Vocabulary】

the Arctic 北极

civilisation n. 文明

spy n. 间谍

doomsday n. 末日，毁灭日

vault n. 地下室，拱顶

destruction n. 毁灭，破坏

wheat n. 小麦

disaster n. 灾难

outbreak n. 爆发

potential n.潜力 adj.潜在的

alarm n. 闹钟，警钟

Full Transcript

Okay, so banks normally look after money. But have you ever heard of a bank that looks after seeds? Well there’s one hidden deep in the Arctic that’s designed to store seeds from all around the world. But why? Well, here’s a clue. It’s also known as the Doomsday Vault!

Deep in the Arctic, on the very edge of civilisation you can spot the tip of a building that looks like something straight out of a spy movie. It’s known as the Doomsday Vault!

Despite the name, there aren’t any nuclear weapons or bad guys with cats hiding away here. The vault was actually built to protect the world’s most precious produce from destruction – plants!

Deep in the mountain, there are 865 thousand types of crop seeds. That includes seeds to grow wheat, barley, potatoes and almost 150 thousand types of rice! They’re stored at freezing temperatures, which kind of freezes them in time so the seeds can still grow into plants centuries later.

Scientists say the vault is super important for a few reasons. Many useful kinds of plants aren’t being grown by farmers anymore and are becoming rare. Other plants could be wiped out by natural disasters, outbreaks of disease, climate change or even war.

REPORTER: That could leave people without the plants or seeds they need to grow food. So scientists reckon tucking a few of these little things away now, could end up being really handy in the future, especially if anything bad happens on earth.

Storing seeds is actually something that’s been done for a while now. Right around the world seed banks have been working together to collect and store as many plant species as possible. There’s even seed banks in Australia full of thousands of native plants, but no other vaults are quite like this one. The crop seeds here come from nearly every corner of the globe.

RESEARCHER: Brazil, Mexico, India, Zimbabwe, Azerbaijan…

REPORTER: Here in Australia alone, we have more than 20 thousand different species of native plants, like the gum tree. So if a native species like this was to be
wiped out, they wouldn’t be found anywhere else in the world.

That’s why 11 thousand Aussie seeds are stored in the Doomsday Vault. The US and Japan have also just added more of their seeds to the mix.

RESEARCHER: It also shows the true global nature of the seed vault. When you’re in the vault, politics don’t matter. What matters is keeping the seeds safe.

To keep any potential bad guys out, the vault is kept secure at all times. Although it’s mainly just polar bears or Arctic foxes hanging about out here!

RESEARCHER 2: So we have all this alarm if someone is trying to break in or something, but that has never happened, I can’t imagine anyone is trying to break into the vault. We don’t have that type of crime up here.

Countries, including Australia, are planning to keep adding to the collection, so the Doomsday Vault can keep saving the world one seed at a time.

(Source: http://www.abc.net.au/btn/story/s4425890.htm)