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Making the case for Andean roots and tubers
As part of an ongoing effort to spread reliable and synthesized information on lesser-known Andean root tuber crops (ARTC), CIP in 2003 published “El Yacon: Fundamentos para el aprovechamiento de un recurso promisorio.” The product of extensive collaboration, the volume provides a comprehensive review of the health benefits attributed to this crop.
Over the past few years, yacon—a member of the sunflower family grown for its sweet, low-calorie, edible roots—has made a remarkable transition from neglect to significant market presence in Peru, primarily thanks to efforts to make known the health benefits associated with it.
Yacon contains sweet-tasting oligo-fructans, a carbohydrate the human body has no enzyme to digest. These substances thus pass through the digestive tract unmetabolized, making the consumption of yacon as a sugar substitute increasingly popular among dieters and diabetics. The publication—produced by CIP and Peru’s University of Cajamarca—provides the first comprehensive review of the health benefits attributed to yacon.
“I believe this is an important step towards substantiating health claims made for yacon, which will help to gain regulatory acceptance in target markets,” says Andean crop specialist Michael Hermann, head of CIP’s ARTC Collaborative Biodiversity Program.
In addition to being used by diabetics as a natural sweetener, research has shown that yacon can potentially help increment the assimilation of calcium in the bones, reduce the risk of developing colon cancer, and strengthen the immune system, among other benefits.
Obtaining regulatory approval from the major health boards of target markets such as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is key, according to CIP biologist Ivan Manrique, as it would contribute to the controlled sale and promotion of yacon and yacon-related products.
“The reckless dissemination of inaccurate information—namely exaggerated health claims—can ruin a crop’s image and credibility,” Manrique explains. Maca is a case in point. Although its qualities as an energy booster have been proven, some distributors have wrongfully marketed maca as the “Andean Viagra.”
“El Yacon: Fundamentos para el aprovechamiento de un recurso promisorio” is one of the outputs of the ARTC Collaborative Biodiversity Program, financed by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). In addition to promoting and supporting new research activities, the program—carried out by CIP and a handful of institutions from Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru—encourages improved use and marketing of these crops.
In addition, CIP is in the process of putting together a series of nine Spanish-language publications on Andean root and tuber crops. The topics range from the in situ conservation of oca in Peru, to the sustainable development and conservation of these crops in Bolivia and Ecuador.
Moreover, CIP and the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI) are jointly publishing a sequence of publications on under-utilized and neglected crops, including a mashua crop monograph, an ulluco production manual, and an impact study of ulluco post-harvest technologies. More volumes of this nature are expected to come on line this year.
Publishing reliable and accurate information, concludes Manrique, helps fill a void of dependable information on lesser known roots and tubers and also encourages the use of these crops locally and abroad. In the Peruvian provincial town of Oxapampa, for example, CIP is collaborating with an association of yacon growers and has supported a special flyer to promote their products in the local market and abroad.
The ultimate goal of these and other similar CIP-led initiatives is to boost the demand for these Andean crops and help the farmers who produce them establish commercial links with potentially lucrative markets, thus improving their incomes and livelihoods.
New snares for the Andean potato weevil
CIP and a group of partner organizations have identified innovative control measures for one of the Andean highland’s most serious potato pests, the Andean potato weevil. The techniques being developed could help resource-poor potato farmers reduce severe production losses resulting from weevil attacks—crop damage of up to 50 percent—while reducing the amount of highly toxic pesticides used to control the pest.
For years, CIP scientists have been searching for biologically safe, integrated pest management methods to control and eliminate the Andean potato weevil. Food attractants and sex pheromones are successfully used to control various other pests, which are drawn to smell-exuding traps. The technical difficulty in identifying similar compounds for the Andean potato weevil, however, has resulted in a lack of available information on similar methods for this pest.
With this in mind, a group of scientists and researchers from CIP, Bolivia’s PROINPA Foundation and the United Kingdom’s Natural Resources Institute (NRI) joined forces last year to launch a research project aimed at identifying pheromones or volatile food plant attractant chemicals that would be effective in luring the Andean potato weevil.
“The idea is to find alternate ways of attracting the weevil that can be used to monitor its populations and to control it through trapping systems,” explains Oscar Ortiz, Head of CIP’s Integrated Crop Management Division.
The collaborative study, led by PROINPA and supported by the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), involved laboratory and field tests in Bolivia and Peru, where weevil infestations are extensive. The results revealed that sex pheromones were not an influential factor in trapping and controlling the weevils. On the other hand, they did show clear evidence of the attraction of adult weevils to potato leaf volatiles.
Analyses conducted by NRI indicated that two particular potato leaf compounds provoked a positive response from the weevils. These compounds were synthesized at NRI and tested as lures in pitfall traps at a PROINPA field station near Cochabamba, Bolivia. The results showed significantly higher numbers of catches in the traps baited with leaf volatiles, compared to the unbaited controls. Work to develop effective trap designs has also been carried out.
“This opens an interesting window for controlling Andean potato weevil in the near future, as scientists could produce synthetic semiochemicals that the insects would respond to,” Ortiz explains. “These compounds could then be used in trapping systems to eliminate the insects directly, or as monitoring devices to enable optimal timing in applications of biological control agents or low-toxic pesticides.”
Local partners become deans of farmer field schools
Potato farmer field schools (FFS), introduced in Nepal by CIP in 1999, have moved into the country’s mainstream research and extension activities thanks to a groundbreaking national policy authorizing government agencies to allocate US$600 per farmer field school activity conducted.
From 1999 to 2002, the CIP-led Users’ Perspectives With Agricultural Research and Development (UPWARD) network worked with various government agencies and nongovernmental organizations in Nepal to develop a field school approach for potato integrated crop management. The Nepalese Department of Agriculture and CARE Nepal were lead partners in the project, which trained over 1,300 farmers in 21 districts during the four-year period.
The partners realized, however, that disseminating the methodologies to other districts would require long-term funding. While extension workers were keen to implement farmer field school activities, they lacked funding to travel to remote potato farming communities, and to secure clean seed and training materials. His Majesty’s Government of Nepal (HMG) funding could only be accessed if there was an officially approved allocation from the annual government budget for these agricultural extension activities.
Recognizing this, the project partners joined forces with the FAO Community Integrated Pest Management Program and local organizations to campaign for a national field school policy. They formed a working group, which developed a position paper and conducted a series of dialogues with Ministry of Agriculture officials. The farmer field school promoters relied on documented experiences in rice, potato, and vegetable field schools to support the policy-making process.
In 2003, these concerted efforts led to the inclusion of a special provision supporting the implementation of FFS activities within Nepal’s new five-year National Development Plan. For its part, the nongovernmental sector has extended support for training and information capacity development. Besides sponsoring training-of-trainer activities, CARE Nepal has published Nepali and English versions of manuals and technical guides. Recently, the project reached a formal agreement with CARE for three of its field offices to serve as regional learning and resource centers.
Similarly, in Indonesia, CIP’s nongovernmental partners are taking on an equally important role in farmer field school promotion. Building on previous CIP research in the country, UPWARD and VECO Indonesia, with its network of over 40 local nongovernmental organizations, began scaling up efforts in 2001.
Their main project site is in the Dompu district of the drought-prone island of Sumbawa in eastern Indonesia where sweetpotato is a key survival crop for poor farming households. After the wet season, when the sole rice crop is produced, sweetpotato sustains food supplies and livelihoods throughout the eight-month dry season, when zero rainfall is normal.
By 2003, five local nongovernmental organizations had conducted 63 farmer field school activities. More importantly, farmer field school approaches initially developed for sweetpotato were adapted to other key food crops, particularly in food-deficient villages. Group learning activities have also mobilized farming communities to initiate collective action against other constraints, such as crop damage by wild pigs—a major pest—using pest control measures that conform with strict Moslem religious norms.
“These project experiences,” concludes UPWARD coordinator Dindo Campilan, “demonstrate that CIP collaborative research not only offers technological solutions, but also creates effective platforms for institutionalizing and sustaining local agricultural innovations.”
Better decision making reduces chemical use
In an on-going effort to combat potato late blight disease and reduce the use of fungicide among resource-poor farmers, CIP and its partner organizations are exploring the possibility of developing simple Decision Support Systems (DSS) for low-income farmers.
One of the most difficult aspects of fungicide usage in the control of late blight—the most serious potato disease worldwide—is determining the correct levels of application. In industrialized countries farmers rely on Decision Support Systems that incorporate sophisticated equipment and communications networks to help them time fungicide sprays. Systems like these, however, are not available to resource-poor farmers in the developing world.
To create an alternative for developing-country farmers, CIP—together with the national potato program in Ecuador—set out to find an easily accessible environmental parameter that could be used to control the amount and frequency of their spraying.
“The aim of our work,” explains Gregory Forbes, leader of CIP’s Potato Integrated Crop Management Project, “is to find an appropriate technology to help fill the technology gap.”
The answer the scientists came upon was measuring accumulated rainfall.
“Wash-off of fungicides resulting from rainfall continues to be one of the principle problems associated with contact fungicides in rain-fed ecologies. These fungicides only protect the plant on its surface, but they don’t penetrate into it,” says Forbes. “Measuring accumulated rainfall, therefore, can give farmers an unbiased measure of whether too much fungicide has been washed off.”
Based on preliminary studies and previous research done in Colombia, scientists hypothesized that using recommended doses, the wash-off from applications of common late blight fungicides (chlorothalonil and mancozeb) would result in dangerous levels after 10, 20 and 30 millimeters of accumulated rainfall for susceptible, moderately resistant and resistant crops, respectively. These thresholds were tested in 2002 and 2003 in Ecuador.
The results demonstrated the efficacy of utilizing rainfall thresholds as a decision support system for managing potato late blight at the two testing locations. Further research is needed to expand the application domain of this technology to other potato-producing developing countries.
“The most efficient treatment was the one that resulted in the lowest number of sprays,” says Forbes. “In the long run, this will help farmers to better protect their crops while saving money and safeguarding their own health, and the health of their environment.”
New markets for native potatoes
A surge in the use of native potatoes in dishes served at Lima’s top restaurants—coupled with a boost in international media exposure of Peru’s cuisine—has indeed helped put the spotlight on “native” potatoes grown by subsistence farmers in the tuber’s highland home.
Representatives of CIP, local agriculture organizations, and Lima’s gastronomic community are taking advantage of these trends to help Peruvian native potato producers increase their incomes. By establishing commercial and cooperative links between the farmers, and local and foreign markets eyeing this indigenous crop, they hope to help them to capitalize on their heritage, creating a path to better livelihoods.
The partners, including the Peruvian National Agricultural Research Institute and Ministry of Agriculture, joined forces in 2003 to form the market-chain association CAPAC PERU (Cadenas Productivas Agrícolas de Calidad).
“The overall idea,” explains CIP economist Thomas Bernet, “is to create new marketing opportunities for Andean farmers and generate a favorable image for native potatoes. We have to make people understand that these potatoes are excellent food: they are natural, tasty, and healthy,” he adds.
To reach their goal, CIP and partners are coordinating with local farmers to supply a portion of their ware to restaurants and cooking schools in Lima. Currently, only a few varieties of native potatoes reach Lima markets. About fifty potato farmers from the small Andean village of Huasahuasi expressed interest in getting involved during an informal meeting between project leaders and farmers late last year. Many chefs have also shown their support and are creating new native potato-based gourmet dishes.
Another effort of this collaborative project involves the development of novel processed products made from native potatoes, namely potato chips and mashed potato powder. Native potatoes are ideal for processing because of their high level of dry matter. They also have excellent frying characteristics, absorbing less oil than commercial varieties—a fact that is much appreciated by health-oriented consumers.
Agriculture provides paths out of urban poverty
CIP and partner organizations are spearheading efforts to improve the livelihoods of farmers in Lima’s shantytowns by helping them identify and seek solutions to the numerous problems they face in producing and marketing their vegetable and livestock products.
Food insecurity plagues large numbers of impoverished households in and around Lima, where agriculture continues to be an important source of food and income.
With this in mind, Urban Harvest, a CIP-coordinated program, launched a new research project in shantytowns east of Lima to evaluate and improve urban agriculture’s contribution to poverty alleviation. This multi-institutional and interdisciplinary project—funded by the Government of Spain—addresses, among other things, animal and crop production issues, marketing constraints, and environmental concerns.
Some of the institutions involved in the initiative include Peru’s National Agricultural Research Institute (INIA) and Institute for Research in Nutrition (INN), as well as local nongovernmental organizations such as Tecnides and IPDA (Instituto Promoción y Desarrollo Agrario).
Urban Harvest and small-scale farmers from the project area began by convening a workshop at CIP headquarters to identify key aspects of urban agriculture that could be improved through joint efforts. At this meeting, held in mid-2003, the participants agreed on strategies to help realize the necessary improvements, such as building better alliances and greater social capital among farmers, and improving understanding among stakeholders through roundtable dialogues.
The workshop—which also involved CIP agricultural economists, plant breeders, pathologists, agronomists, geographic information system (GIS) specialists, and social anthropologists—provided insights into the relevant crop and livestock production systems, as well as the policy issues affecting local producers. Workshop discussions demonstrated that one of the main constraints confronting urban agriculture was the absence of local policymaking and planning procedures.
“Many city planners do not recognize agriculture as being a viable urban activity. Instead, they consider it a public nuisance,” explains Gordon Prain, leader of the Urban Harvest program.
An important element of the project, therefore, is providing information to local municipal agencies and planning bodies on the positive benefits that urban agriculture can generate for human health, the city environment, and recycling of urban waste products.
The project also seeks to build farmers’ capacity to use and adapt improved pest management strategies and to take advantage of market opportunities. It emphasizes the use of social and discovery-based learning, including farmer field school methodologies, group learning, and hands-on activities. “In this learning-by-doing process of education,” explains Prain, “researchers act as catalysts in the social learning process among farmers. Emphasis is placed on improving and enhancing farmers’ already existing knowledge through practical experiments carried out in their own fields.”
Additionally, research partners and local municipal authorities are using a stakeholder and policy dialogue model to directly contribute to long-term urban development. Part of the implementation of this model involves conducting analyses that will help to better understand the local agricultural groups and associations, the municipal level departments and officials, and how these groups interrelate.
As part of the official project launch, a meeting of Lima mayors was convened in November 2003. During the meeting, senior policy makers from Havana, Cuba and Cuenca, Ecuador, described how their cities had successfully implemented integrated urban agriculture programs. Following the meeting—which was also attended by local government authorities, nongovernmental organizations and Urban Harvest staff and research associates—the local mayors signed a declaration supporting the integration of urban agriculture within their municipal development plans.
Potato DNA fingerprints go online
Scientists from CIP and the Scottish Crop Research Institute (SCRI) have worked together for nine years to develop an innovative molecular tool that allows the creation of a standardized database containing DNA fingerprints of nearly 1,000 types of cultivated potatoes.
The database complements information obtained from CIP’s cultivated potato collection, which is already characterized according to morphological and molecular descriptors, taxonomy, and disease and pest resistance. The collection, held in trust by CIP, is comprised of more than 5,000 clonal and true seed accessions, and contains a diverse assortment of landrace potatoes collected from wide ranging agro-ecologies.
By adding molecular markers—highly reproducible descriptors that are neutral in terms of environmental influences—to the collection’s characterization data, scientist are able to improve the precise identification of the potato accessions held in CIP’s genebank.
Molecular biologist Marc Ghislain explains that the documentation of genetic identity in ex situ collections such as CIP’s contributes to the safeguarding of original types in germplasm repositories, the identification of varietal distinctness and pedigree, and the registration of varieties.
The database works by using the high genetic variability of Simple Sequence Repeats (SSRs), which are tandem repeats of 1-5 nucleotides. The repeated numbers reveal genetic differences among individuals.
In addition to supplying key genetic information, SSR technology is also appropriate for developing-country laboratories and breeding programs with modest funding and/or expertise in molecular techniques.
Anticipating that SSR data will grow at CIP and abroad, scientists developed the SSR database to meet the following objectives: include a publicly accessible DNA fingerprint for each potato accession held in CIP’s genebank; standardize formats and descriptors for new SSR markers; and store data produced through Generation, the CGIAR Challenge Program on genetic diversity (50 SSR markers on 1,000 accessions).
Researchers from CIP and SCRI—the founding group of the potato SSRs—are also spearheading efforts to develop a web-accessible SSR database. Two groups of potato geneticists, at the University of Idaho and at Argentina’s Insituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA-Balcarce), have expressed interest in contributing to the initiative. They will begin by reviewing the prototype to improve accessibility and load data developed at their institutions.
The web-enabled version of the database includes a Search and Sort feature, as well as internal and external hyperlink access to other information sources. A local BLAST search feature on nucleic acid sequences, which are used to determine optimum primers for each SSR marker, will eventually be added.
The database’s content is currently searchable by locus, PCR primer information, experiment, chromosome, allele, and genotype; in the future, access via a genome map should be possible. Each entry point leads to a table of downloadable data that displays the work of CIP and SCRI researchers, as well as a recently published report on minimal molecular marker annotation by the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI). Raw scoring data will also be available upon request.
Partners recognized for innovation
The CIP-led PRAPACE network and a group of partner organizations working together to improve the lives of refugees in war-torn northern Uganda, where over one million displaced people are living in refugee camps, were among the finalists in the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research’s Innovation Marketplace competition.
The poster competition, which forms part of the Group’s Annual General Meeting, aims to recognize outstanding programs based on their originality, innovativeness, impact, potential to be replicated, and sustainability.
PRAPACE—the Regional Potato and Sweetpotato Improvement Program for Eastern and Central Africa—shared the recognition with the James Arwata Foundation and the Ugandan National Agricultural Research Organization. Together, they presented their work to introduce new high beta-carotene, orange-fleshed sweetpotatoes to provide solutions to the refugees’ pressing food, health, and income problems.
Sweetpotato is a sturdy crop that is widely grown in Africa for household consumption. The new orange-fleshed varieties provide a vital source of vitamin A and are also great income generators. Deficiency of vitamin A is one of Africa’s most widespread public health problems, particularly among children, pregnant mothers, and HIV/AIDS patients. It can lead to a weakened immune system, blindness, and death.
In addition to disseminating information on the benefits of orange-fleshed sweetpotatoes to researchers and local community members, PRAPACE and its partners are working to boost the distribution of vine cuttings, used as planting material, throughout Uganda’s war-torn districts. In just one year, the program has reached over 33,000 people.
As the poster competition demonstrated, this innovative partnership is expected to bring direct benefits to thousands of communities in northern and eastern Uganda, and eventually in neighboring countries facing similar challenges. |
