Unidentified pest that's affecting quinoa and chocho. According to INIAP researchers this pests spread the pollens and cause cross pollination between quinoa. This causes issues such as luck of homogeneity of varieties.
As part of Sustainable Seeds Systems Lab, one day before the whole #agroCOUGology group arrive in Ecuador for the Faculty-Led agroecology class, few of us; Kevin, Leonardo and Cedric got the opportunity to visit the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Agropecuarias (INIAP) - Santa Catalina Station. At INIAP, we were well welcomed and met the Andean Grain breeding program and Cereals breeding program as well. We were given a tour in the quinoa fields guided by Angel Murillo, Laura Vega, and Nelson Mason. We had the opportunity to see the advance lines of quinoa among Pata de Venado (Deer feet) and Tunkahuan variety with some quinoa varieties from Bolivia. Besides, we had the chance to observe the large diversity of quinoa, for instance different grain colors (black, white, brown, and red). Another interesting part of the tour was to find plots of habas bean and andean lupin (chocho) between the quinoa trials as borders in the same field helping in pests and disease control.
Quinoa head.
Andean Lupin ( chocho ).
Javier Garofalo, the leader of the wheat and barley program, and Charlie Barnes, the rust specialist welcomed us and showed us the different trials in the field. Barley variety trials were grown on approximately around two hectares. Among the varieties of barley grown at INIAP, 30 of them are malting barley lines from Washington State University (WSU) and were provided by Sustainable Seeds Systems Lab (SSSL). All the 30 lines were established with success in Santa Catalina conditions. According to INIAP in their colaboration with Sustainable Seeds Systems Lab, the next step will be to evaluate the yield, the malting quality, and increase seeds to conduct new variety trials in the next season.
Javier explaining us about the barley line in the field.
By Cedric Habiyaremye & Leonardo Hinojosa
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