PERU:
Preserving the Potato in Its
Birthplace
By
Milagros Salazar
CUZCO, Peru, Apr 28 (IPS)
- Thousands of varieties of
potato (Solanum tuberosum),
one of the most widely-eaten
and well-known foods in the
world, have been developed
in the heart of South
America’s Andes mountains,
where the crop was
domesticated more than 8,000
years ago.
Peru is home to the world’s
biggest germplasm bank of
potatoes, containing seeds,
tissue culture and plants
from 5,000 varieties.
The biologists, geneticists
and agronomic engineers
working with the non-profit
International Potato Centre
(CIP), which began to
collect samples in Lima in
1971, carry out lab and
field research with the help
of rural communities.
Of the 4,500 native and 500
improved or modern varieties
preserved by the CIP, more
than 2,500 are native to
Peru.
U.S. taxonomist David
Spooner at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison determined
that all modern varieties of
potato can be traced back to
a single species that
originated in what is now
southern Peru, between the
south Andean region of Cuzco
and the altiplano
(highlands) shared with
Bolivia, CIP biologist Ana
Panta explained to IPS.
POTATO PARK
"We are raising these
organic potatoes for our
children, our families. We
don't use fertilisers, only
manure," Mario Paco
Gallegos, president of the
Paru Paru community and vice
president of the Association
of Potato Park Communities
in Cuzco, the ancient Inca
capital, told IPS.
Gallegos represents one of
the six communities that
agreed in late 2004 to work
with the CIP to help
preserve the crop and
guarantee its sustainable
use, based on the
application of scientific
research and the recovery of
traditional indigenous
knowledge.
The agreement gave rise to
the Potato Park, where some
10,000 hectares are covered
with "layme" or "muyuy" --
fields worked communally by
indigenous "campesino"
(peasant) communities --
interspersed with ponds and
streams, in the Sacred
Valley of the Incas.
When IPS visited the Potato
Park, campesino men and
women from the community of
Paru Paru carrying picks and
hoes awaited the team of
researchers accompanying us:
CIP agronomist René Gómez
and members of the
non-governmental Asociación
Andes.
The task that brought them
together was the
construction of a community
greenhouse for the
preservation of seeds.
The Potato Park is home to
1,200 families -- some 6,700
people -- according to the
Asociación Andes.
IPS and the other visitors
were shown a kind of open
air germplasm bank under a
bluish roof. Between 620 and
640 varieties of potato are
planted at altitudes of
3,950 to 4,400 metres above
sea level, Gómez explained.
Around 410 of these were
"repatriated" from the CIP
gene bank after being
cleaned of viruses and
pests.
Gómez, the curator of the
CIP’s potato germplasm
collection, pointed out the
difference in productivity:
the seeds cleaned of viruses
can produce up to 18 tons
per hectare, compared to
just six tons for
traditional campesino crops,
and a national average of 12
tons per hectare.
The Potato Park uses a crop
rotation system, allowing
fields to periodically lie
fallow to recover soil
fertility.
According to the United
Nations Food and Agriculture
Organisation (FAO), potatoes
are grown on 600,000 small
farms covering a total of
260,000 hectares in Peru.
MUCH MORE THAN A LIVING
MUSEUM
"We have the responsibility
to protect the world’s
largest collection of
potatoes," said CIP director
Pamela Anderson in Lima.
"This task is ongoing and
will not end, and also
involves the dynamic
conservation of the crop,
through our work with rural
communities.
"The idea is to return their
potatoes, their treasure, to
them so that they can
preserve the crop’s
biodiversity," she told IPS,
stressing the support
received from the Italian
government in particular.
In the last five years, the
CIP has "repatriated",
virus-free, 25 percent of
the native varieties of
potato from more than 30
highlands communities, said
Anderson.
The CIP is like a museum
that conserves varieties of
the seven original species
that began to be
domesticated 8,000 years
ago, as well as 150 kinds of
wild potatoes, their
ancestors, in test tubes,
cold chambers and even the
fields, said Panta.
Centuries of food history
are displayed in trays on a
table, with potatoes of all
colours and shapes -- blue,
purple, yellow, red, gold,
russet, speckled, round,
clustered, long, oval,
pear-shaped -- identified by
their traditional names in
the Quechua and Aymara
languages, alongside their
scientific names.
The native names are as
colourful as the potatoes
themselves. One bumpy,
cluster-like potato is known
as "pusi qachun waqachi" or
"makes the daughter-in-law
cry".
Panta explained that the
name derives from an
indigenous tradition: "When
a future mother-in-law wants
to test the woman who is
going to marry her son, she
gives her this potato to
peel. If she can peel it
without damaging the pulp,
it means she is a good cook
and will be able to take
good care of her son."
COLOURS AND FLAVOURS
Native potatoes in Peru come
in at least nine different
colours. But the differences
go beyond skin-deep, and
also lie in their flavour,
the way they are used, their
nutritional value and their
resistance to different
kinds of weather conditions.
Some have drawn the
attention of the world of
haute cuisine, as exotic
ingredients, and have been
used in international
exhibitions because of their
flavours, such as last
year’s MadridFusión07: V
International Gastronomy
Summit in Spain, which
showcased the Peruvian
potato as one of the world’s
seven most important
ingredients.
The nutritional value of the
potato is also celebrated.
FAO has invited chefs and
cooks from around Latin
America to share original
recipes in which the potato
is the basic ingredient, as
part of its Chefs Against
Hunger programme.
The recipes will be
published in the programme’s
first International
Cookbook, one of the
activities planned for 2008,
declared the International
Year of the Potato by the
United Nations.
PROTEIN, VITAMINS AND ENERGY
Boiled, stewed, roasted,
fried, dried, mashed,
grated, stuffed or converted
into flour, potatoes have
been adapted to culinary
traditions all over the
planet. They are the
fourth-largest staple food
crop in the world, after
maize, wheat and rice, with
annual global output
amounting to more than 323
million tons.
The potato is rich in
several micronutrients,
especially vitamin C and
vitamins B1, B3 and B6, and
in minerals like potassium,
magnesium and phosphorus.
Its protein content is also
very high in comparison with
other roots and tubers,
according to the FAO, making
it an important food source
for the poor in Peru.
But while the potato still
forms the base of the diet
of impoverished highland
Indians, consumption of
potatoes in Peru has dropped
over the last 30 years to
120 kilos per person a year
to just 65. The government,
which has set itself a goal
of bringing that total back
up to 100 kilos per person,
is promoting the baking of
bread with potato flour.
Private companies and
supermarkets are also
offering more and more
potato products in
attractive packages, like
flakes and specially
selected and packed fresh
potatoes of a wide range of
native varieties.
CLIMATE CHANGE
Farmers say potato crops are
feeling the effects of
climate change. This year,
unusual drought and snowfall
patterns hurt production in
many areas.
In addition, "diseases and
pests are spreading as the
climate warms up. Our
potatoes used to be
healthy," said Paco
Gallegos, who pointed out
that farmers are planting
their crops at higher and
higher altitudes, to avoid
the heat.
Diversity is important in
that respect, because some
varieties are more resistant
to certain climate
conditions than others.
"In this harvest, our
production is insufficient,"
Justino Zuta, "varayoc"
(traditional leader) of the
community of Pampallacta,
told IPS worriedly as he
harvested "Compish" potatoes
with the help of his
four-year-old son Rosinaldo.
He pulled several
worm-infested and tiny
potatoes from the huge heap
that he had dug up over the
course of a 12-hour workday.
The living conditions of
these small potato farmers
must be improved, because
"the big beneficiaries are
the more than 820 million
people suffering from hunger
in the world," FAO
representative in Peru,
Jean-François Ghyoot, told
IPS. "In Latin America
alone, there are more than
52 million malnourished
people."
Potatoes can contribute much
more than they already do
"to food security on the
planet," he added.
(END/2008)
Reprinted
from www.ipsnews.net
