There are no high, barbed-wired fences. No barking Dobermans. No armed guards. Just a friendly welcome video playing in the lobby and a warm-natured receptionist behind a desk, who hands you a clipboard with a sign-in sheet.

But that doesn't mean the center is lax on security. From the outside it may not look like a bastion of the American agriculture industry. Inside, it holds one of the world's largest collections of seeds, genetic material for livestock, microbes and endangered plants under highly sophisticated lock and key.

Upstairs in the facility's main cold storage vault, ceiling-high shelves hold seemingly endless rows of white pouches. In this room, there are 600,000 seed packets, which puts the total number of seeds in the billions. The temperature is kept at a level similar to a home freezer, at low humidity to arrest seed degradation and keep them viable longer.

"They're all bar-coded so we know exactly where everything is," said Dave Dierig, research leader at the center and one of six people in the building with access to the vaults. Another security measure is the labeling system. Looking at a seed pouch, there's nothing that tells you what kind of seeds you're holding, just a bar code. You need access to a secure database to find out what's inside.

The seed vault in Fort Collins, Colo., houses genetic material from across the globe. Photo: Grace Hood/KUNC

To the right of the large, gray metal vault doors, a TV screen shows a live stream of the seed vault. It serves as another reminder of the building's emphasis on security. In this place, you're always on camera.

Other seed vaults throughout the world store their back-up collections here because of the facility's reputation not just for the promise of security but also the ability to preserve the viability of seeds for longer periods of time. Private companies such as Monsanto and Dupont can also store their seeds in the federally owned building.

"It would really be a rare case where we would keep another company's seed. There'd have to be some kind of extenuating circumstances, for them to say, 'We need you to keep this seed,' " Dierig said.

Even though it is rare, privately owned, genetically modified seed does make it into storage. That's how all eyes fell on the vault's doors when news broke in June about Monsanto's glyphosate-resistant wheat, commonly called Roundup Ready, found growing in small volunteer patches in a field in Oregon.

Dierig said he's unable to comment on the Oregon case as the USDA is still investigating the exact source of the errant wheat plants.

With the investigation turning in other directions, this beige building in Colorado can return to business as usual: securely storing the world's seeds.

Luke Runyon is a reporter for Harvest Public Media, a public radio reporting collaboration that focuses on agriculture and food production.

Copyright 2013 KUNC-FM.

National Center for Genetic Resources PreservationNational Center for Genetic Resources Preservation

Colorado Vault is Fort Knox for the World's Seeds