Norway: Svalbard seed vault helps protect Africa's food supply

"We have received 60 boxes of seeds from 15 seed banks around the world," said Asmund Asdal, a Norwegian biologist who looks after the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. "The boxes are sealed and we are now scanning them in the airport's security system to make sure they only contain seeds." For 15 years, plant DNA has been stored here in the permafrost of Spitsbergen Island in Norway's Svalbard archipelago at minus 18 degrees Celsius (around zero Fahrenheit) — designed to protect the world's food supply from a doomsday-like catastrophe and preserve it for future generations . There are now 1.2 million samples: sorghum, wheat, beans, maize — and more recently, German vegetables. As so often in recent years, Asdal drove out on a frosty morning to the airport of the world's northernmost city, Longyearbyen, a small piece of civilization in the middle of the Arctic Ocean located almost 1,500 kilometers (around 930 miles) from the North Pole . To view this video please enable JavaScript, and ...