a laboratory to preserve 1,400 varieties of potatoes

Will climate change have the skin of the most essential tuber in our diet? This is what the guardians of the Potato Park in Peru are trying to avoid. They protect, preserve and observe the 1,400 varieties still cultivated in the Andes mountain range.

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In the heart of the Inca Valley, on the road that leads to Machu Picchu, the birthplace of the potato 8,000 years ago, lies the food base of the Quechua communities throughout this region. Here are some of these varieties: the puma’s paw, the lama’s noseor more poetic, the one who makes beautiful girls crythey are pink, red, white, purple, but they are increasingly threatened.

The Andes are warming; in 30 years, Peruvian glaciers have lost 50% of their surface area. The dry and very cool climate of the region is confronted each year with the arrival of more humid air and rising temperatures – particularly this year with the El Nino phenomenon. These changes expose crops to new diseases and new parasites, such as common scab which, potentially, can quickly wipe out all these varieties.

A sanctuary of ancestral cultivation techniques

The idea of ​​the Potato Park is to ensure that they are preserved before they disappear. This park is a sanctuary of ancestral cultivation techniques, using simple spades and farm manure, nothing else. And above all, these Quechua Indians harvest not only the tubers, but also the potato seeds to protect them. A vital step for Lino Mamani Huarca, representative of the Amaru community of the Potato Park. “For us, this seed bank is our Noah’s Ark. And we are the guardians of the potato. If we keep so many varieties, it is to preserve our food security. If global warming causes disappear certain varieties, we have everything else at hand. And that, thanks to the technique of our ancestors”he explains.

A laboratory that compares varieties to changing temperatures

But these Quechua Indians are now forced to plant 300 meters higher than their ancestors to find freshness. Here too, this park is a laboratory. For the Quechua communities of Peru, it is absolutely necessary to continue growing these potatoes. They sent the samples to the Svalbard World Reserve, in Norway, this bunker where nearly a million seeds of all the food species on the planet are locked up. But their conviction is that we must give these varieties the possibility of adapting to climate change, of carrying out their own mutation. Keeping them in a bunker is a bit like putting them in a museum and considering that they are already dead.