Thousands of crop varieties from 4 corners of the world depart for Arctic seed vault

At the end of January, more than 200,000 crop varieties from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East -- drawn from vast seed collections maintained by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research -- will be shipped to a remote island near the Arctic Circle, where they will be stored in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a facility capable of preserving their vitality for thousands of years.