Peru Listed Number One in Domesticated Native Plants
9/29/99
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Title: Nation is First in Domesticated Native Plants
Source: InterPress Service (IPS)
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: September 29, 199
Byline: Zoraida Portillo
Peru is home to some 25,000 plant species, putting it among the
world's top countries for biological diversity, but the nation is
number one in domesticated native plants.
Peru's variety of wild plants is so extensive that in potatoes alone,
it holds 50 percent of all the species that exist in the Americas.
Such plant wealth is confirmed by two recent books that were
published almost simultaneously - the ''Encyclopaedic Dictionary of
Useful Plants of Peru'' and ''Potatoes of South America.''
The first book represents 20 years of research by engineer Antonio
Brack Egg, an advisor to the United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP).
The other, ''Potatoes of South America,'' is the fruit of Carlos
Ochoa's more than 30 years of searching for potato plants throughout
Peru. Ochoa won the Inter-American Science Prize of the Organisation
of American States and is the only Peruvian member of the U.S.-based
National Academy of Science and Technology.
The 650-page ''Encyclopaedic Dictionary'' places Peru as the world's
largest producer of domesticated native plants, with 128 species. The
dictionary also says that Peru and India are the two countries that
have the most plants - 5,000 - with known and applied uses. For Peru,
this represents 20 percent of its flora, and 90 percent of these
useful species are native.
The dictionary provides information on each one of the species, which
have uses as diverse as food, medicine, condiments, fertilizer,
cosmetics, pesticides, wood, decoration and animal forage.
The volume also includes the plants' names in the seven languages of
the principal ethnic groups living in Peru - Spanish, Quechua,
Aymara, Ashaninka, Huambisa, Aguaruna, Machiguenga -, as well as
their scientific names in Latin.
Brack told IPS that his interest in the plant world had two origins:
One was a childhood experience in which an indigenous Yanesha woman
(in the Amazonian region) cured him with natural herbs, and the other
was scientific, as he was tutored by a Salesian priest.
''I also discovered that in Peru it is easier to spend 20 years
gathering material for a book than it is to get the book published,''
said Brack, referring to the difficulties he faced until he obtained
funding from the UNDP and the Bartolom, de las Casas Centre for
Andean Studies.
Ochoa also had to wait several years to see his 1,000-page volume on
wild Peruvian potato species published. But he ultimately found
support from the International Potato Centre (CIP), where Ochoa is a
Scientist Emeritus, from Calbee Potato Inc. of Japan and from
La'Ultramare Agronomy Institute in Italy.
The book contains 430 drawings by Ochoa himself, maps of the species'
geographic distribution and 36 watercolors by artist and plant
pathologist, Franz Frey.
The wild potatoes are not suitable for human consumption, but are
used to develop new species that can be grown under difficult
environmental conditions, produce higher yields, or are resistant to
diseases and pests.
''Due to the great diversity and potential of Peru's wild species,
the opportunity for future research on genetic improvement appears to
be infinite,'' said Ochoa, who has dedicated most of his life to
exploring the Andean region in search of older potato species.
Once, when he was in the outer reaches of Cajamarca department,
located 856 km from Lima, he ran into a group of rural bandits who
thought he was a treasure hunter. They had a hard time believing that
his ''treasure'' was a handful of potato plants, and they pushed him
down the mountainside.
On another search mission in Colombia, while Ochoa was examining a
wild potato field, a volcano erupted, and he was barely able to
escape with his potato samples, the only ones that survived because
the eruption covered the field with lava.
One of Ochoa's most recent trips was to Peru's northern desert.
He returned after two weeks with samples of miniature potato tubers
that are drought-tolerant. He believes they are resistant to late
blight, a disease that decimates potato production throughout the
world.