La Ruta Cóndor: Conserving Potato Biodiversity in the High Andes

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In the Andes, the condor is an ancient deity, and its flight is apt inspiration for the International Potato Center (CIP)’s Ruta Cóndor project to restore and conserve the genetic diversity of native potatoes within their natural centers of origin.  “It’s like looking through the eyes of the Condor, watching over the farmers in their fields, managing the richness of their resources, and rescuing their culture and ancient wisdom,” says René Gomez, agronomist and CIP’s genebank curator for native potatoes.

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Press Release:

January 15, 2010

Ruta Condor
Conserving Potato Biodiversity in the High Andes

Lima, Peru. In the Andes, the condor is an ancient deity, and its flight is apt inspiration for the International Potato Center (CIP)’s Ruta Condor project to restore and conserve the genetic diversity of native potatoes within their natural centers of origin.  “It’s like looking through the eyes of the Condor, watching over the farmers in their fields, managing the richness of their resources, and rescuing their culture and ancient wisdom,” says René Gomez, agronomist and CIP’s genebank curator for native potatoes.

Ruta Condor (Condor Route) follows ancient Inca trading roads that criss-cross the Andes. Ultimately, the goal is to include a chain of microconservation sites, dedicated to agrobiodiversity and preserving the world’s rich heritage of potato diversity, spanning the spine of the Andes from Mérida in Venezuela to Jujuy in Argentina.

The program includes the repatriation of native potato varieties back to their communities of origin. The varieties were collected from Andean farming communities 20 to 40 years ago and kept under conservation in CIP’s ex situ genebank. The objective is to restore lost native potato cultivars and improve diversity affected by frost, drought, crop pests and diseases, human migrations, and poverty. CIP ensures that the planting material that is re-introduced is high quality and disease-free, thus increasing yields.

CIP’s program of returning planting material to farmers started in 1998, in just four Andean communities. Since then, CIP has repatriated over 3,600 samples of more than 1,200 varieties of native potato in 41 Andean farm communities, following the Qhapaqñan, the ancient north-south pre-Columbian highway that unified the Inca Empire.

“The idea is not only conservation, but also to develop a sustainable management that can offer some benefit to the communities,” explains Gomez.  In 2007, for example, CIP has worked with the potato farmers to find commercial outlets and marketing opportunities for native potatoes.

Gomez believes the project illustrates the complementary relationship between in situ and ex situ conservation, where material that is stored in CIP’s laboratory genebank is used to repatriate healthy potatoes back to rural communities. In the natural in situ environment, the struggle between the genes and the stresses they encounter ensures that evolution continues. However, though nature is dynamic it is also slow. Growth chambers and other equipment in the ex situ laboratory environment give scientists a way to accelerate the natural selection processes to complement those that occur in the natural environment. This capability is important as we help these microcenters adapt to the escalating impacts of climate change.

The Ruta Condor project represents a prime opportunity for a cooperative international effort to manage nature’s resources. “There is potential for the concept to be applied to other Andean crops, forming part of an integrated approach to the conservation of biodiversity for Latin America and the broader world,” concludes Gomez.

For more information,
please contact:
Valerie Gwinner
Head, Communications and Public Awareness Department
International Potato Center (CIP)
v.gwinner@cgiar.org
Tel: +51 1 317 5334