0:13 here in Peru potatoes have a huge
0:16 cultural meaning potatoes are part of
0:19 the key diet potatoes are eaten at
0:25 dinner we once asked a farmer here and
0:28 he said without potatoes there is no
0:32 life that's what he kind of summed it [Music]
0:55 up the potato has been part of andian
1:00 culture for about 10,000 years
1:02 they first cultivated the potato around
1:04 Lago tiaka which is in the border
1:05 between the southern part of Peru and
1:08 the northern part of Bolivia so that is
1:10 effectively where people started
1:13 thinking about changing the evolutionary
1:15 path of potatoes into becoming something
1:28 nutrients the potato is one of the top
1:31 crops for food around the
1:35 world and it encompasses a lot of good things
1:41 nutritionally it has good protein it has
1:44 good starches it also has iron and
1:45 calcium and many other things that
1:48 people need for their
1:50 nutrition and a lot of people's
1:58 well but potato biodiversity is under
2:02 threat from climate change from
2:05 political instability from
2:13 challenges so here at the international
2:15 potato Center in order to address some
2:17 of these challenges we conserve the
2:20 biodiversity of the potato and we
2:22 preserve the genetic resources in test
2:24 tubes of a lot of the different types of
2:26 potatoes that are no longer in existence
2:33 we conserve three different kinds of [Music]
2:36 [Music]
2:40 potatoes wild potatoes are what you
2:43 found before people cultivated potatoes
2:45 so they're very small they're very
2:48 bitter but they have a very important
2:50 combination of genes that we want to be
2:52 able to
2:55 conserve when people started cultivating
2:57 wild potatoes and picking the best of
3:00 the best we arrived at what we Define as
3:03 a native potato which is a potato that
3:05 people have used through the years maybe
3:07 hundreds of
3:09 years now with the effect of human
3:12 activity in the world there's more rain
3:15 in some places there's more heat than was
3:15 was
3:18 expected and so we bred these native
3:20 varieties with wild potatoes that
3:23 contained maybe disease resistance or heat
3:24 heat
3:27 tolerance those are then called improved potatoes
3:39 the andies has always been a very
3:42 risk-prone environment and that's why we
3:44 see so much diversity here because the
3:48 diversity is kind of a response to risk
4:08 so the purpose of today's visit is to
4:11 monitor the diversity of potato that is
4:13 maintained by the farmers not in Jean
4:34 Mor M what we're doing now withan we're
4:37 going to each of his row and each of the
4:45 encounter we basically register the
4:48 varieties according to the naming thatan gives
4:49 gives
4:53 us we already have a baseline from 2006
4:57 2007 and we aim to compare it [Music]
4:59 [Music]
5:01 this was incredible I've never seen this one
5:02 one
5:06 before I've been visiting Don Juan's
5:09 farm for for at least few years and this
5:15 appeared sometimes new things appear and
5:17 we don't really know how to explain how
5:20 they appear or why they appear whether
5:23 it's mutation or whether it's because of
5:26 uh sexual crosses or it's just a very
5:27 scarce variety we've never seen it before
5:30 before
5:31 but that's why it's so important to come
5:34 back to these Farms because the evolving
5:36 part and the dynamic part takes place in the
5:48 fields the number one problem now for
5:51 Farmers is climate
5:54 change we used to be able to plant
5:58 potatoes at 4,000 m above sea
6:01 level now because it's hotter the local
6:04 farmers have had to move up the mountain
6:07 a little bit more than say 20 or 30 or
6:09 40 years ago to get that cool
6:11 temperature which is the appropriate
6:27 potatoes but there's just so much that
6:28 you can climb up the hill to be able to
6:31 plant potatoes
6:33 that's why it's very good if you use the
6:35 improved potatoes that are coming out of
6:37 the breeding program here at the
6:43 Center a lot of the varieties that we
6:46 have collected here in the Jean Bank are
6:48 very heat tolerant because they were
6:51 collected in an area that naturally is
6:58 evolve okay yes
7:01 okay and so when breeders want to cross
7:03 varieties to try to cultivate for heat
7:06 tolerance they look for a plant that has
7:08 been collected in that type of hot
7:11 environment and so you're introducing
7:21 heat nowadays in Peru the estimate is
7:26 that about one3 of the total potato area
7:29 is dedicated to Native potatoes and two
7:38 varieties compared to Native potatoes
7:42 improved potatoes have higher yields
7:44 they have a cheaper price they're more
7:46 accessible to Urban
7:55 climates so improved potatoes can feed
8:05 I think that the secret to climate
8:09 adaptation is partly inside of the
8:12 biodiversity conservation is dynamic
8:15 Farmers adapt they adopt new varieties
8:18 some may get lost and other varieties
8:20 that are stronger and better adapted to
8:24 the new conditions will become more
8:26 abandoned what's important is that we
8:29 continue to support farmers in their
8:31 efforts to maintain potato diversity
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