On September 30th, a ceremony in the city of Puno, Peru took place to celebrate the result of an important collaborative project among the United States Potato Genebank (USPG), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Peruvian partners including the National Program for Agriculture (INIA), the International Potato Center and local farmers in the Andean-Altiplano regions. The USPG houses the national collection of wild potato and cultivated breeding stocks that has been set up to help US researchers and breeders. In cooperation with UW-Madison, the USPG has broadened its collaborative work to include global initiatives in the forms of technology transfer, research, and breeding.
During the ceremony, Peruvian authorities officially released a new native potato variety with enhanced cold hardiness and frost tolerance. The Andes and Altiplano regions in South America are often negatively impacted by frost, so developing varieties with superior resilience is critical, especially for the vulnerable farm communities of these regions. This was the second variety created in Wisconsin, the first being the native variety Wiñay, released in 2018. This new variety was named Llapanchispaq, the Quechuan word meaning “for all of us”, following the local tradition of allowing the farmers to name the new variety.
Dr. Jorge Ganoza, Head of the Peruvian National Program for Agriculture (INIA), recognized and thanked Dr. Jesus Arcos, a Potato Scientist at INIA, for his very important contribution to the success of this project. He was a very important collaborator with the team at UW, including Drs. John Bamberg, Jiwan Palta, and Alfonso del Rio, who contributed to the science and breeding and constant support over the many years of this project. He emphasized that work like this must continue, especially in times of climate impacts, and that the doors of INIA are always open to collaborations with UW. He also acknowledged the support of CALS Global in helping INIA to complete critical steps in the release of this new variety.
Instituto Nacional de Innovación Agraria (INIA) in the field in Peru
This collaboration showed the importance of a multinational, all-encompassing collaboration to deploy the valuable genetic diversity preserved at the USPG. More significantly, this project supported global efforts to counter climate change and to promote opportunities for food security and sustainability. From another point of view, this aligned with the Wisconsin Idea, as this accomplishment was made possible thanks to many years of significant scientific and technical progress conducted in most party by our USPG and UW scientists. They led us to discover extreme cold hardiness in potato relatives and then to research modern technology to make the use of that trait in breeding possible. The results – two new native varieties for the Andes and the Altiplano with enhanced frost tolerance that out-yielded the existing popular varieties there.
This is the first time that breeding lines created in the United States became potato varieties adopted in Peru. This illustrates the benefits of long-term germplasm preservation, international cooperation and sharing. The team is now working on generating more breeding materials for Peru and targeting other traits in hopes to make positive impacts on environmental stresses, disease, and pests.
This international approach has shown that global cooperation can be successful in attaining the long-sought goal of achieving benefit sharing – promoting the use of genetic resources for fair and equitable sharing of benefits rom their use.