Quinoa fed Andean llamas long before it fed people
Quinoa looks like a grain but is closer to spinach. Around Lake Titicaca it was first grown as animal fodder 5,200 to 7,000 years ago, and only later became human food. Its sudden global fame after 2006 tripled prices and brought fresh problems to the highland farms that grow it.
Chenopodium quinoa belongs to the amaranth family, which makes it a pseudocereal rather than a grass. The Quechua word kinwa gave it its name. People in the Titicaca basin of Bolivia and Peru began eating the seeds 3,000 to 4,000 years ago, well after they had started feeding them to livestock. The seeds carry notable protein, fibre and minerals such as potassium and magnesium.
The plant usually stands 1 to 2 metres tall, with powdery lobed leaves and a woody stem that can be green, red or purple. Tiny flowers cluster on branching heads and mostly pollinate themselves, producing seeds about 2 millimetres across in white, red or black. Pigments called betalains help lure animals that spread pollen and seed. It thrives at high altitude, and studies suggest it copes with salty soils by building up protective organic compounds and growing fewer leaf pores to save water.
Its genetic story is tangled. Quinoa is an allotetraploid, carrying full chromosome sets from two ancestral species that hybridised several million years ago. Recent work suggests Andean and Mexican forms were domesticated separately from a wild North American relative, and a wild ancestor may have reached South America carried by animals. The German botanist Carl Ludwig Willdenow first described the species from specimens gathered by Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland.
Small farms and associations still handle nearly all Andean production, but the crop is now farmed in over 70 nations, Kenya and India among them. Surging demand in North America, Europe and Australasia tripled prices between 2006 and 2014, setting off a boom and bust. Heavy monoculture, combined with a changing climate in the Andes, has since cut yields and degraded the land.
Source: Quinoa
