Nearly half a century ago, when the International Potato Center (CIP) was founded, potato collectors in remote regions of Central America traveled for “weeks on end” with dwindling tanks of gas to find new specimens, CIP director general Barbara Wells said in her remarks at CIP’s 45th anniversary celebration September 16.
“They traveled to small villages or on horseback when their four-wheel-drive vehicles could go no further to collect the thousands of varieties of tubers that now populate CIP’s genebank,” she said. “They used local knowledge and their years of experience to gather these treasures of the Incas. One researcher was known to travel on a remote stretch of road when he would tell the driver to stop because he could smell the potatoes. Apparently he was correct in nine out of 10 times.”
CIP’s first director general, Richard Sawyer, envisioned a regional research and collaboration with researchers around the world to develop new technologies and innovations to improve food security.
“He [Sawyer] probably never dreamt that one day farmers in the high Andes, the rainforests of sub-Saharan Africa or the upper Ganges in India would be connected to the world by smartphones or researchers would video-conference into scientific meetings,” Wells said. “He may not have dreamt that sweet potato would someday become one of CIP’s mandate crops, nor would he have thought a CIP scientist, much less three of them, would win the World Food Prize for their work on it.”
Reflecting back over four and a half decades since CIP’s inception, Wells and others linked to the center had much to celebrate, even as they acknowledged the relatively brief span of time CIP has been in existence compared to the long, rich history of the potato itself.
“Eight thousand years ago, potato domestication began in the Andes,” said Oscar Ortiz, CIP’s deputy director for research, “and potatoes have been cultivated and thrived there for the subsequent thousands of years, thanks to the work of farmer-scientists, who then, as they are now, the true potato guardians or potato arariwas.
“While the papa arariwa has tended to be our namesake tuber for thousands of years, CIP has had but 45 years of history in potato’s center of biodiversity. Still, these 45 years of uninterrupted and very productive research have been for the benefit of Peru, Latin America and the entire world.”
From an early focus on conserving genetic resources to ongoing breeding efforts, CIP has remained at the forefront of research, said Ortiz.
“Our work has put potato and sweet potato, in particular, as key crops to face the current challenges established in the [UN’s] Millennium Development Goals and further expanded up by the Sustainable Development Goals,” Ortiz continued. “We firmly believe that potato and sweet potato are crops that can reduce poverty and malnutrition, increase income, increase food security, support sustainable intensification and diversification of food systems, and promote adaptation to climate change.”
Keynote speaker and sweet potato advocate Nane Annan noted another critical CIP accomplishment of 2016: being awarded the World Food Prize (WFP). Three CIP scientists—Maria Andrade, Jan Low and Robert Mwanga—were named WFP Laureates.
“I am certain that the recognition by the World Food Prize Foundation of the benefits of OFSP for food and nutrition security will help extend its reach into the regions where it is most needed,” Annan said. “Malnutrition, as we know, remains a serious barrier to development, particularly in rural areas in Africa. It is denying children, communities and nations from reaching their full potential.”
Annan became an unofficial OFSP ambassador several years ago, after learning more about the crop’s health benefits. “I learned… how it can help the most vulnerable of all—pregnant women, new mothers and children,” she said. “I learned that it can grow in poor soils, produce good yields in a short growing period—even under changing weather patterns—and improve revenues along the value chain.”
Much work lies ahead, cautioned Ortiz, such as figuring out “how to feed a growing population with shrinking resources—less land, less water—and under the threats of climate change, that places greater responsibility on the shoulders of agricultural research organizations like [ours]. We could not have survived all of these 45 years without you, and countless farmers and communities are counting on us to work together to improve their food security and nutrition.”
Across the world and throughout the year, CIP will be celebrating key events in the organization’s history and sharing news about the work ahead.