Adventurous Journeys In Search Of Kumeras

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29051, 13 November 1959, Page 22

Adventurous Journeys In Search Of Kumeras

The search for varieties of kumera or sweet potatoes has taken Mr D. E. Yen, a plant breeder who is in charge of the vegetable section of the Crop Research Division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, into the interior of New Guinea where he was in touch with some of the most primitive native peoples in the world and into the jungles of South America. Mr Yen, who has been in Christchurch this week, has only recently returned from five months in Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Colombia under a Rockefeller Foundation grant and since 1957 he has also been in New Guinea, including Dutch New Guinea, Malaya, Siam and the Philippines, on the same mission and under the same auspices. The result is that he has some 250 varieties of kumera from the Pacific region growing in the field at Auckland and a further 150 or more gathered on his recent South American visit in quarantine in this country. They have to remain in quarantine for a year before they can be grown as an ordinary field crop.

In the South American countries, Mr Yen travelled some 10,000 to 12,000 miles by foot, by bus, aeroplane and canoe. One of the remotest regions he visited was jungle country in Peru near the border with Colombia and Brazil. There he travelled mainly by canoe as there were no roads.

The handiest airfield to the area was about two hours’ flying time from a town of any size. “That is the sort of place where you would expect to find excitement,” said Mr Yen. “Books written about this sort of country would be packed full of action, but as far as I was concerned, apart from an encounter with snakes from a reasonable distance, a few fish, and alligators there was not much there. It was just wild and outlandish.” Help of Missionaries

In his jungle travels in South America, Mr Yen was often assisted by Christian missionaries, but at times he was on his own resources. Once he was within four feet of a boa constrictor and while those with him offered to try to kill it with knives so that he might have the skin, he preferred that they should not take the risk. In the headwaters of the Amazon he encountered relatively primitive natives, but he said that they were not as primitive as those he had met in the highlands of J>Jew Guinea. The New Guinea natives wore no clothing and had no idea of Western culture. In South America Christian influence seemed to be strong and even in quite isolated regions this was reflected in their wearing some clothing, he said.

Even after his South American travels, Mr Yen still classes as the most adventurous of his kumera-hunting missions a journey he made with a police officer and six riflemen into the Baliem valley of the highlands of Dutch New Guinea. The police officer was making investigations into a case of murder. In South America Mr Yen occasionally travelled by curious airlines. Once he arrived at a remote airport in Ecuador to find a Junkers aircraft, which he said looked as if it had been made of , corrugated iron, waiting to take him out The journey of a little more than an hour to Quito was over mountainous country but the aircraft had to fly through the mountains because it could not fly over them. Zones of Peru

Mr Yen visited the three major elihiatic zones of Peru—the lowlying jungle on the east .of the Andes, the Mountainous areas and the coastal desert area under irrigation from the rivers. In all these areas and up to 10,000 ft in Bolivia he found kumeras growing. Only among the Indian peoples in the coastal regions of Peru did he find kumeras to be the major item of diet. In Bolivia he was amazed to find wheats and barleys of Middle East origin growing up to 10,000 and 12,000 ft. Potatoes, he said, seemed to be grown at all levels, and even jn the jungle, and maize under nearly all conditions except at very high altitudes. Animal husbandry he found to be rather primitive. On the high country, llamas were still herded and sheep and goats looked much alike. Some attention was, however, being directed to dairying and milk production and in Colombia he saw one of the most elaborate milking sheds he had ever seen.

In this country there seemed to be the greatest possibilities for development of grassland farming. Although it was winter there seemed to be some relatively high producing pastures but the explanation was that there were too few animals to use them.

Mr Yen collects swollen roots of kumera or vines for addition to his kumera collection which will be listed with the Food and Agriculture Organisation so that scientists from all over the world may draw on it. This work, he said, was of interest to a wide range of scientists. The kumera had a high nutrient value although people in New Zealand might not have a very high regard for it. In the Pacific area it supported an amazing number of people and in the interior of New Guinea it made up almost the whole food supply. During the war a great many islands lost their stocks of this and other food plants, and one of the purposes of his work was the redistribution of this material. On the economic side there was the improvement of the plant in respect of disease resistance and storage ability. There were also industrial uses. In Japan, where starch was extracted from the plant, they were interested in varieties of high starch content. There was also interest in the work from an ethnological point of view. The plant, as far as could be ascertained, came originally from South America. The extent of the contact between Polynesian peoples and South America in pre-European days was a matter of some debate so it was possible that a study of the varieties from the various areas could throw some light on the ethnological problem, ‘‘or else confuse it,” he said.