Peru's National Institute of Agricultural Innovation Identifies 130 Potato Varieties

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A team of researchers from Peru's National Institute of Agricultural Innovation identifies 130 Peruvian potato varieties. INIA informed the Spanish international news agency, EFE, about the latest development on Monday.

The research project is part of the country's effort to catalogue the different types of potato and its classifications. The data collected will be added to the National Registry of the Native Potato of Peru, Latino Fox News reported.

A week ago, it was reported that Peru is going to develop new varieties of potato. It came after an agreement from three Peruvian agencies who conduct studies about potatoes.

The National Institute of Agrarian Innovation, the National Agricultural Innovation Program or NAIP, and the International Potato Center or CIP, all have signed agreements to fund a research that would come up with new varieties of potatoes, according to a report by Peru This Week.

Meanwhile, INIA said that the catalogue they have been working started in 2010. Other agencies who helped to make sure the project gets through are the the International Potato Center, the Chugay District Municipality and the Pataz Association. The project would not have been completed without the effort of the whole community.

The catalogue, which will be presented in a book format and will be submitted next Friday, contains a list of the potato varieties. Each variety will have its own morphological descriptions, nutritional values and agricultural characteristics.

There will also be some kind of a tutorial on how each potato can be cooked on a daily basis. In this way, people in the community will take advantage of the newly discovered tuberous crop.

According to a report relayed by Latino Fox News, there are about 62,000 acres of potatoes propagated every year in La Libertad, Peru. The total area, which is equivalent to 25,000 hectares, covers six percent of the whole area that has crop cultivation in the Peruvian Andes.

According to a report by the International Potato Center, there are over 4,000 varieties of potatoes that can be found in the Andean highlands of Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru. Officials admit that there are still varieties that have not been discovered or identified yet.

It came to a surprise for some experts that these potatoes, which are known to be one of the best in the world, have grown in this part of the earth. The mountains of the Andes have got to have one of the harshest conditions in the whole world, which altitudes are as high 4,200 meters. The farmers in the community have also planted these crops from generation to generation with little help from agrochemicals.