Winter - Classical MileEnd Alpacas

South America's other famous export makes its mark in
2008. Rachel Hebditch celebrates the humble tuber that
sustained the people of a simple society and
perhaps enabled them to domesticate and
develop the camelid species that so many 'first
world' businesses profit from today. Read, eat
and give thanks.
This is the Year of the Frog, the
National Year of Reading, the
International Year of Planet Earth, European
Year of Intercultural Dialogue and, wait for
it, the United Nations International Year of
the Potato.
It is the potato we are concerned about,
one of the world's great staple foods, which
originated in South America where thousands
of varieties are grown.
Potatoes are rich in carbohydrates with
the highest protein content in the family of
root and tuber crops. The protein is of fairly
high quality with an amino acid pattern well
matched to human requirements. They are
rich in vitamin C – a single medium sized
potato contains about half the recommended
daily intake – and they contain a fifth of the
recommended daily value of potassium.
The farmers in Peru's high Andes are
among the poorest in the country with
average incomes of under one US dollar a
day. But they are sitting on something of a
goldmine as the region is home to some three
thousand varieties of indigenous potatoes.
Some of the native strains look pretty strange
as they are brightly coloured inside and out
and come in all sorts of odd shapes. Many
are disease resistant and were selected by the
pre-Inca peoples for their good taste and high
culinary qualities.
The potato, Solanum tuberosum, is an
herbaceous annual that grows up to 40 inches
tall and produces a tuber – also called potato
– so rich in starch that it ranks as the world's
fourth most important food crop, after maize,
wheat and rice. The potato belongs to the
Solanaceae or 'nightshade' family of flowering
plants, and shares the genus Solanum with
at least 1000 other species, including tomato
and eggplant. S. tuberosum is divided into two,
only slightly different, subspecies: andigena
which is adapted to short day conditions and
is mainly grown in the Andes, and tuberosum,
the potato now cultivated around the world
which is believed to be descended from a small
introduction to Europe of andigena potatoes
that later adapted to longer day lengths.
There are many organisations working to
exploit the enormous diversity of species in
South America. T'ikapapa, an initiative of the
International Potato Center's Papa Andina
Partnership Program, is one of the finalists
in a global competition for development
projects. T'ikapapa is a marketing concept
that links small farmers in the Andean
highlands to expanding urban markets
utilising potato biodiversity to create new
market opportunities. It has won two awards
already and the local farmers working with
researchers have produced two new varieties
of potato – the Pallayponcho and Pukalliclla
– named after the poncho and a square shawl.
Farmers in these areas do not use chemical
fertilisers or pesticides or prepare the soil in
a commercial way but rather till the soil with
the traditional chaquitaclla. They plant a large
number of different varieties that are suited
to the particular environment to decrease the
chances of crop failure.
The vast majority of the native species of
potatoes are grown above 3800 meters but
because of climate change many are now
victims of late blight. The work done by the
community farmers and potato researchers to
breed superior potato clones with resistance to
blight will be used in other parts of the world.
The potato company, Greenvale, in the
UK, has recently launched Mayan Gold, after
working with the Scottish Crop Research
Institute for fifteen years, to produce a
variety that goes back to an original South
American potato. This Institute holds the
Commonwealth Potato Collection which has
54 Alpaca World Magazine Winter 2007 / 08