Potato panic in Andes

Press, 5 April 1989, Page 19

Potato panic in Andes

Peruvian terrorists, not content with killing humans, are now attacking Peru’s greatest gift to the world, the potato. The Sendero Luminoso, the Maoist guerrilla organisation that has been sowing panic in the Andes, has begun wrecking the work of the International Potato Centre, the scientific body sponsored by the United Nations and supported by the British taxpayer, among others. One worker at the centre’s station at Huancayo, 3300 metres up in the Andes where rare species of the tuber are grown and preserved for posterity, was murdered in December by gangs who say their leader Abimael Guzman is the Fourth Sword of the Revolution after Mao, Lenin, and Marx and Engels. Such is the fear of damage to the centre’s unique collection of 2900 species of potato that the whereabouts of plots where many of them grow are kept a secret by Dr Richard Sawyer, the U.S.-born director-general, and his staff at the headquarters outside the Peruvian capital.

Samples of the species for propagation in the Third World are also being .preserved in vitro in laboratories here, but others are being stored at premises in neighbouring Ecuador. Dr Sawyer, who has been the chief architect of the world famous centre, is adamant: “Rumours that the International Potato Centre is about to pack up and quit are totally untrue.” Commitment of the staff, which includes several British scientists in senior positions, is high in spite of the threats. The work includes everything from research into the unexploited genetic resources of strains of potato not in common use to the development of dehydrated potato chips. An enthusiast for the potato, Dr Sawyer points out that it produces more food more quickly, on less land and in harsher temperatures, than other crops such as wheat, rice or maize. A hectare of potatoes produces nearly as much food as two acres of grain. The potato has spread from its point of origin around Lake

Titicaca, on the borders of Peru and Bolivia, and is being cultivated particularly enthusiastically in the Third World, notably South-East Asia. China is the world’s second largest producer, after the U.S.S.R. and before Poland, though China’s yield, at 10 tonnes a hectares, is little more than a quarter of what the Dutch can achieve. Brought to England by Sir Walter Raleigh, the potato has probably been more quickly adopted in the Third World than in Europe. Initially, for instance, the Scots would not eat it because it was not mentioned in the Bible, whereas Lord Byron thought it had aphrodisiac properties. Last year for the first time, the centre started research into the sweet potato, which Dr Sawyer says has the world’s greatest potential for expansion. At the moment, it ranks third in value of production in the Third World and fifth in contribution of calories, yet so far has benefitted by only a fraction of its fair share of investment and research. Copyright London Observer