Peru’s Áncash region hands 138 native potato varieties to local custodians

Regional agricultural authorities in the Peruvian Andes have entrusted seed of 138 native potato varieties to two local organisations. The goal is to keep the region’s genetic diversity alive in farmers’ fields, not only in gene banks.

The Regional Agriculture Directorate of Áncash (Dirección Regional de Agricultura, DRA) split the collection between two recipients. Granja Ecológica Turmanye, an ecological farm, received 72 varieties. Asociación Apícola Ecomiel Independencia, a beekeepers’ association, received 66.

The handover was formalised through an inter-institutional cooperation agreement under a regional ordinance promoting the conservation and revaluation of native potatoes. Regional agriculture director Joel Lázaro Evaristo signed for the DRA. Kety Javier Ramírez and Liz Rodríguez Arévalo signed for the receiving organisations. The DRA’s Agriculture and Livestock Department led the initiative.

Conservation in the field

The scheme follows the on-farm, or in situ, conservation model. Under this model, traditional varieties survive because farmers keep planting, multiplying and selecting them under real growing conditions, rather than storing them as accessions in a vault. On-farm work complements centralised collections such as the International Potato Center’s (CIP) cryobank in Lima. CIP opened that facility in 2024, and it holds around 3,600 potato accessions.

Áncash has pursued this approach before. The DRA has previously distributed native potato accessions to growers and monitored the plantings; one recent round covered around 80 accessions. In the Pamparomás district of Huaylas province, smallholders working with a local rural development service have harvested between 160 and 200 native varieties in successive seasons at altitudes above 3,000 metres. CIP itself replanted 110 Áncash native varieties in the region in 2015, returning them to the area where they originated.

Scale and open questions

Peru is home to more than 4,000 potato varieties. According to the Ministry of Agrarian Development and Irrigation (MIDAGRI), more than 711,000 people grow the crop. Against that backdrop, 138 varieties represent roughly 3% of the country’s recognised diversity. The national figure is widely cited but approximate, so this share is indicative only.

Several details have not been disclosed:

• Volume. Neither the directorate nor media reports give the volume of material transferred, in kilograms or in tubers.
• Type of material. The Spanish term semillas could mean seed tubers or true botanical seed. In Andean native potato systems it most likely means tubers.
• Agreement terms. It is not known how long the agreement runs, whether recipients must multiply or return material, or how the plantings will be monitored.

These details matter because on-farm conservation depends on continuity. Unlike a gene bank sample, a potato variety maintained through tubers can be lost within one or two seasons if nobody replants it. The choice of a beekeeping association as one of the two custodians is unusual. It suggests the region is trying to widen its conservation network beyond conventional potato growers, but that network’s long-term capacity is not yet tested.

Why native varieties matter

Andean native potatoes are regarded as a strategic genetic reserve. Among them are types adapted to high altitude, drought, frost and local disease pressure. These traits are increasingly valuable to breeders responding to climate change and emerging pathogens.

Native potatoes also have commercial value. Their unusual colours, flavours and textures have secured niches in fine dining and in speciality snack production. Regional officials say the Áncash initiative aims to support agriculture that is both sustainable and competitive, alongside protecting biodiversity.

Sources: Argenpapa / Agro Perú Informa; Revista Lombriz; Regional Agriculture Directorate of Áncash; MIDAGRI; Agraria.pe; PotatoPro.