Chili pepper delivery spices up remote seed vault

WASHINGTON (AP) — Wenk’s Yellow Hots, Pico de Gallos and the unpredictably hot San Juan “Tsiles” chili peppers have safely arrived at a “doomsday” vault in the Arctic.

Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., says he and other congressmen delivered seeds from the pepper varieties on Sunday to a Norwegian seed bank on the remote Svalbard archipelago.

Operators say the Svalbard Global Seed Vault has the world’s most diverse repository of crop seeds and is a safeguard against war or natural disasters that could wipe out food crops.

The seeds came from a Department of Agriculture collection in Colorado. In addition to peppers, seeds for plants including peanuts and melons were sent to the vault.