Argentina
Argentina the Argentine Republic, is a country located in the southern half of South America. Sharing the bulk of the Southern Cone with Chile to the west, the country is bordered by Bolivia and Paraguay to the north, Brazil to the northeast and the South Atlantic Ocean to the east, the Drake Passage to the south. With a mainland area of 2,780,400 km2, Argentina is the eighth-largest country in the world, the fourth largest in the Americas, the largest Spanish-speaking nation; the sovereign state is subdivided into twenty-three provinces and one autonomous city, Buenos Aires, the federal capital of the nation as decided by Congress. The provinces and the capital exist under a federal system. Argentina claims sovereignty over part of Antarctica, the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands; the earliest recorded human presence in modern-day Argentina dates back to the Paleolithic period. The Inca Empire expanded to the northwest of the country in Pre-Columbian times; the country has its roots in Spanish colonization of the region during the 16th century.
Argentina rose as the successor state of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, a Spanish overseas viceroyalty founded in 1776. The declaration and fight for independence was followed by an extended civil war that lasted until 1861, culminating in the country's reorganization as a federation of provinces with Buenos Aires as its capital city; the country thereafter enjoyed relative peace and stability, with several waves of European immigration radically reshaping its cultural and demographic outlook. The almost-unparalleled increase in prosperity led to Argentina becoming the seventh wealthiest nation in the world by the early 20th century. Following the Great Depression in the 1930s, Argentina descended into political instability and economic decline that pushed it back into underdevelopment, though it remained among the fifteen richest countries for several decades. Following the death of President Juan Perón in 1974, his widow, Isabel Martínez de Perón, ascended to the presidency, she was overthrown in 1976 by a U.
S.-backed coup which installed a right-wing military dictatorship. The military government persecuted and murdered numerous political critics and leftists in the Dirty War, a period of state terrorism that lasted until the election of Raúl Alfonsín as President in 1983. Several of the junta's leaders were convicted of their crimes and sentenced to imprisonment. Argentina is a prominent regional power in the Southern Cone and Latin America, retains its historic status as a middle power in international affairs. Argentina has the second largest economy in South America, the third-largest in Latin America, membership in the G-15 and G-20 major economies, it is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, World Trade Organization, Union of South American Nations, Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and the Organization of Ibero-American States. Despite its history of economic instability, it ranks second highest in the Human Development Index in Latin America; the description of the country by the word Argentina has been found on a Venetian map in 1536.
In English the name "Argentina" comes from the Spanish language, however the naming itself is not Spanish, but Italian. Argentina means in Italian " of silver, silver coloured" borrowed from the Old French adjective argentine " of silver" > "silver coloured" mentioned in the 12th century. The French word argentine is the feminine form of argentin and derives from argent "silver" with the suffix -in; the Italian naming "Argentina" for the country implies Terra Argentina "land of silver" or Costa Argentina "coast of silver". In Italian, the adjective or the proper noun is used in an autonomous way as a substantive and replaces it and it is said l'Argentina; the name Argentina was first given by the Venetian and Genoese navigators, such as Giovanni Caboto. In Spanish and Portuguese, the words for "silver" are plata and prata and " of silver" is said plateado and prateado. Argentina was first associated with the silver mountains legend, widespread among the first European explorers of the La Plata Basin.
The first written use of the name in Spanish can be traced to La Argentina, a 1602 poem by Martín del Barco Centenera describing the region. Although "Argentina" was in common usage by the 18th century, the country was formally named "Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata" by the Spanish Empire, "United Provinces of the Río de la Plata" after independence; the 1826 constitution included the first use of the name "Argentine Republic" in legal documents. The name "Argentine Confederation" was commonly used and was formalized in the Argentine Constitution of 1853. In 1860 a presidential decree settled the country's name as "Argentine Republic", that year's constitutional amendment ruled all the names since 1810 as valid. In the English language the country was traditionally called "the Argentine", mimicking the typical Spanish usage la Argentina and resulting from a mistaken shortening of the fuller name'Argentine Republic'.'The Argentine' fell out of fashion during the mid-to-late 20th century, now the country is referred to as "Argentina".
In the Spanish language "Argentina" is feminine, taking the feminine article "La" as the i
Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala
Felipe Huaman Poma de Ayala known as Guamán Poma or Wamán Poma, was a Quechua nobleman known for chronicling and denouncing the ill treatment of the natives of the Andes by the Spanish after their conquest. Today, Guaman Poma is noted for his illustrated chronicle, Nueva corónica y buen gobierno; the son of a noble family from the central southern Peruvian province of Lucanas located in the modern day department of Ayacucho, he was a direct descendent of the eminent indigenous conqueror and ruler Huaman-Chava-Ayauca Yarovilca-Huanuco, Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala was a fluent speaker of several Quechua and Aru dialects, who learned the Spanish language as a child or adolescent. He went on to become literate in the language, although he did not achieve a perfect grasp of Spanish grammar, he described himself as "eighty years of age" in his 1615 manuscript, leading many to deduce that he was born in the year 1535, after the 1533 Spanish conquest of Peru. It seems that he used the figure "80" as a metaphor for old age and many other references in his text indicate a possible birthdate of 1550 or shortly thereafter.
The information known about Guamán Poma's life comes from a variety of written sources. Most he was born in the Lucanas province and spent most of his life in or near Huamanga, a central Peruvian district, it is believed that the first time he left his hometown was when he served as an interpreter on the church inspection tour of a Spanish priest named Cristóbal de Albornoz, attempting to eliminate idolatries in the small Quechua towns. In the late 1580s to early 1590s, he was an assistant to Fray Martin de Murúa, another Spanish cleric. In 1594 he was employed by the Spanish judge of Huamanga, in charge of land titles. In late 1600, all of his property was confiscated and he was banished from Huamanga, an event that led to his travels throughout the country and most to the composition of his masterpiece. Based on a published work, in 1967, by archaeologist Edward P. Lanning, "Peru before the Incas", one of the first references to an organized culture around the Huaman Culture, was between 1000 CE - 1476 CE, known as the "Late Intermediate", before the Inca Empire expanded, forming alliances with the most powerful empires.
The Huaman Family, per stirpes, belonged to the wealthy among the Inca Empire and after. As it used to be common, the marriages among the ruling families took place, to remain in control and current. At the time, the Huaman were a selected family of warriors, land owners in several regions of the pre-Inca empire, they venerated the wild bird, that only grows in the Andean Region of Peru, above 4,000 meters above sea level. There can be found, among the Inca's family tree lines: a)Tarco Huaman Inca, son of Inca Mayta Capac, cousin of Capac Yupanqui, grandson of Lloque Yupanqui. B) Huaman Achachi, brother of Tupac Inca Yupanqui. C)Inca Huaman Taysi, son of Inca Rocca. D)Landowner Don Antonio Huaman Cucho, in Huamanga City, in 1570 declares ownership of several cities for the descendent of the Huaman Family as an Inca descendent. During the occupation of the conquerors, the Huaman Family, being a extensive family, were fiercely prosecuted, fearing the overtake of the Andean government, the impeachment of the Hispanic occupation and land ownership claims.
Reasons for which most of wealth in pure gold, ornaments were hidden and re-distributed among the descendants. Most family members moved to different areas from Ecuador; the most prominent landowners were located in Pariamarca, Santiago de Huaman and Huamanga. There is a tale that says that direct descendants from the ruling Inca Huaman, are protected and secretly maintained as of "ready" to overtake the Peruvian empire and re-impose the supremacy of order over chaos. There are tales among the Andeans that one day the "... Hawk will fly high, where the Sun surrenders..." A handful of sixteenth-century documents attest that Huaman Poma served in the 1560s-70s as a Quechua translator for Fray Cristóbal de Albornoz in his campaign to eradicate the messianic apostasy, known as Taki Unquy, from the Christian doctrine of local believers. Huaman Poma appeared as a plaintiff in a series of lawsuits from the late 1590s, in which he attempted to recover land and political title in the Chupas valley that he believed to be his by family right.
These suits proved disastrous for him. Huaman Poma's great work was the El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno, a 1,189-page document written in Spanish, with sections in Quechua, he wrote Corónica instead of a form of the word common in the Middle Ages. His book remains the longest sustained critique of Spanish colonial rule produced by an indigenous subject in the entire colonial period. Written between 1600 and 1615 and addressed to King Philip III of Spain, the Corónica outlines the injustices of colonial rule and argues that the Spanish were foreign settlers in Peru. "It is our country," he said, "because God has given it to us." The king never received the document. The Crónica is remarkable in many ways. First, it has brilliant melding of writing and fine line drawings; the work includes Huaman Poma's'Mapa Mundi de Reino de las Indias', a cartographic representation of the Inca Empire drawn in the Mappa mundi style favored by medieval European mapmakers, which placed Cusco, the Peruvian capital, at the center of the world.
Second, the manuscript expresses the view
Maize
Maize known as corn, is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. The leafy stalk of the plant produces pollen inflorescences and separate ovuliferous inflorescences called ears that yield kernels or seeds, which are fruits. Maize has become a staple food in many parts of the world, with the total production of maize surpassing that of wheat or rice. However, little of this maize is consumed directly by humans: most is used for corn ethanol, animal feed and other maize products, such as corn starch and corn syrup; the six major types of maize are dent corn, flint corn, pod corn, flour corn, sweet corn. Maize is the most grown grain crop throughout the Americas, with 361 million metric tons grown in the United States in 2014. 40% of the crop—130 million tons—is used for corn ethanol. Genetically modified maize made up 85% of the maize planted in the United States in 2009. Sugar-rich varieties called sweet corn are grown for human consumption as kernels, while field corn varieties are used for animal feed, various corn-based human food uses, as chemical feedstocks.
Maize is used in making ethanol and other biofuels. Most historians believe. Recent research in the early 21st century has modified this view somewhat. An influential 2002 study by Matsuoka et al. has demonstrated that, rather than the multiple independent domestications model, all maize arose from a single domestication in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago. The study demonstrated that the oldest surviving maize types are those of the Mexican highlands. Maize spread from this region over the Americas along two major paths; this is consistent with a model based on the archaeological record suggesting that maize diversified in the highlands of Mexico before spreading to the lowlands. Archaeologist Dolores Piperno has said: A large corpus of data indicates that it was dispersed into lower Central America by 7600 BP and had moved into the inter-Andean valleys of Colombia between 7000 and 6000 BP. Since even earlier dates have been published. According to a genetic study by Embrapa, corn cultivation was introduced in South America from Mexico, in two great waves: the first, more than 6000 years ago, spread through the Andes.
Evidence of cultivation in Peru has been found dating to about 6700 years ago. The second wave, about 2000 years ago, through the lowlands of South America. Before domestication, maize plants grew only small, 25 millimetres long corn cobs, only one per plant. In Spielvogel's view, many centuries of artificial selection by the indigenous people of the Americas resulted in the development of maize plants capable of growing several cobs per plant, which were several centimetres/inches long each; the Olmec and Maya cultivated maize in numerous varieties throughout Mesoamerica. It was believed. Research of the 21st century has established earlier dates; the region developed a trade network based on surplus and varieties of maize crops. Mapuches of south-central Chile cultivated maize along with quinoa and potatoes in Pre-Hispanic times, however potato was the staple food of most Mapuches, "specially in the southern and coastal territories where maize did not reach maturity". Before the expansion of the Inca Empire maize was traded and transported as far south as 40°19' S in Melinquina, Lácar Department.
In that location maize remains were found inside pottery dated to 730 ±80 BP and 920 ±60 BP. This maize was brought across the Andes from Chile; the presence of maize in Guaitecas Archipelago, which constitute southernmost outspost of Pre-Hispanic agriculture, is reported by early Spanish explorers. However the Spanish may have misidentified the plant. After the arrival of Europeans in 1492, Spanish settlers consumed maize and explorers and traders carried it back to Europe and introduced it to other countries. Spanish settlers far preferred wheat bread to cassava, or potatoes. Maize flour could not be substituted for wheat for communion bread, since in Christian belief only wheat could undergo transubstantiation and be transformed into the body of Christ; some Spaniards worried that by eating indigenous foods, which they did not consider nutritious, they would weaken and risk turning into Indians. "In the view of Europeans, it was the food they ate more than the environment in which they lived, that gave Amerindians and Spaniards both their distinctive physical characteristics and their characteristic personalities."
Despite these worries, Spaniards did consume maize. Archeological evidence from Florida sites indicate. Maize spread to the rest of the world because of its ability to grow in diverse climates, it was cultivated in Spain just a few decades after Columbus's voyages and spread to Italy, West Africa and elsewhere. The word maize derives from the Spanish form of the indigenous Taíno word for mahiz, it is known by other names around the world. The word "corn" outside North America and New Zealand refers to any cereal crop, its meaning understood to vary geographically to refer to the local staple. In the United Stat
Inca Empire
The Inca Empire known as the Incan Empire and the Inka Empire, was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. Its political and administrative structure is considered by most scholars to have been the most developed in the Americas before Columbus' arrival; the administrative and military center of the empire was located in the city of Cusco. The Inca civilization arose from the Peruvian highlands sometime in the early 13th century, its last stronghold was conquered by the Spanish in 1572. From 1438 to 1533, the Incas incorporated a large portion of western South America, centered on the Andean Mountains, using conquest and peaceful assimilation, among other methods. At its largest, the empire joined Peru, southwest Ecuador and south central Bolivia, northwest Argentina, northern Chile and a small part of southwest Colombia into a state comparable to the historical empires of Eurasia, its official language was Quechua. Many local forms of worship persisted in the empire, most of them concerning local sacred Huacas, but the Inca leadership encouraged the sun worship of Inti – their sun god – and imposed its sovereignty above other cults such as that of Pachamama.
The Incas considered their king, the Sapa Inca, to be the "son of the sun."The Inca Empire was unique in that it lacked many features associated with civilization in the Old World. In the words of one scholar, The Incas lacked the use of wheeled vehicles, they lacked animals to ride and draft animals that could pull wagons and plows... lacked the knowledge of iron and steel... Above all, they lacked a system of writing... Despite these supposed handicaps, the Incas were still able to construct one of the greatest imperial states in human history. Notable features of the Inca Empire include its monumental architecture stonework, extensive road network reaching all corners of the empire, finely-woven textiles, use of knotted strings for record keeping and communication, agricultural innovations in a difficult environment, the organization and management fostered or imposed on its people and their labor; the Incan economy has been described in contradictory ways by scholars:... feudal, socialist The Inca empire functioned without money and without markets.
Instead, exchange of goods and services was based on reciprocity between individuals and among individuals and Inca rulers. "Taxes" consisted of a labour obligation of a person to the Empire. The Inca rulers reciprocated by granting access to land and goods and providing food and drink in celebratory feasts for their subjects; the Inca referred to their empire as Tawantinsuyu, "the four suyu". In Quechua, tawa is four and -ntin is a suffix naming a group, so that a tawantin is a quartet, a group of four things taken together, in this case representing the four suyu whose corners met at the capital; the four suyu were: Chinchaysuyu, Antisuyu and Kuntisuyu. The name Tawantinsuyu was, therefore, a descriptive term indicating a union of provinces; the Spanish transliterated the name as Tahuatinsuyu. The term Inka means "ruler" or "lord" in Quechua and was used to refer to the ruling class or the ruling family; the Incas were a small percentage of the total population of the empire numbering only 15,000 to 40,000, but ruling a population of around 10 million people.
The Spanish adopted the term as an ethnic term referring to all subjects of the empire rather than the ruling class. As such, the name Imperio inca referred to the nation that they encountered and subsequently conquered; the Inca Empire was the last chapter of thousands of years of Andean civilizations. The Andean civilization was one of five civilizations in the world deemed by scholars to be "pristine", indigenous and not derivative from other civilizations; the Inca Empire was preceded by two large-scale empires in the Andes: the Tiwanaku, based around Lake Titicaca and the Wari or Huari centered near the city of Ayacucho. The Wari occupied the Cuzco area for about 400 years. Thus, many of the characteristics of the Inca Empire derived from earlier multi-ethnic and expansive Andean cultures. Carl Troll has argued that the development of the Inca state in the central Andes was aided by conditions that allows for the elaboration of the staple food chuño. Chuño, which can be stored for long periods, is made of potato dried at the freezing temperatures that are common at nighttime in the southern Peruvian highlands.
Such link between the Inca state and chuño may be questioned as potatoes and other crops such as maize can be dried with only sunlight. Troll did argue that llamas, the Inca's pack animal, can be found in its largest numbers in this same region, it is worth considering the maximum extent of the Inca Empire coincided with the greatest distribution of llamas and alpacas in Pre-Hispanic America. The link between the Andean biomes of puna and páramo and the Inca state is a matter of research; as a third point Troll pointed out irrigation technology as advantageous to the Inca state-building. While Troll theorized environmental influences on the Inca Empire he opposed environmental determinism arguing that culture lay at the core of the Inca civilization; the Inca people were a pastoral tribe in the Cusco area around the 12th century. Incan oral history tells an origin story of three caves; the center cave at Tampu T'uqu was named Qhapaq T'uqu. The other
Quinoa
Quinoa is an annual seed-producing flowering plant grown as a grain crop. It is a pseudocereal, not a grass, unlike rice, it is botanically related to spinach. Quinoa seeds are rich in protein, dietary fiber, B vitamins, dietary minerals in amounts greater than in many grains, it is gluten-free. Quinoa is cultivated in the Andes Mountains of Bolivia and Peru where it originated. After harvest, the seeds are processed to remove the bitter-tasting outer seed coat. Quinoa crop prices tripled between 2006 and 2013 as a result of increased consumption in North America and Australasia. Quinoa originated in the Andean region of northwestern South America, it was first used to feed livestock 5.2-7 thousand years ago, for human consumption 3-4 thousand years ago in the Lake Titicaca basin of Peru and Bolivia. Chenopodium quinoa is a dicotyledonous annual plant about 1–2 m high, it has broad powdery, lobed leaves arranged alternately. The woody central stem is branched or unbranched depending on the variety and may be green, red or purple.
The flowering panicles arise from leaf axils along the stem. Each panicle has a central axis from which a secondary axis emerges either with flowers or bearing a tertiary axis carrying the flowers; the green hypogynous flowers have a simple perianth and are self-fertilizing. The fruits are about 2 mm in diameter and of various colors—from white to red or black, depending on the cultivar. Chenopodium quinoa is believed to have been domesticated in the Peruvian Andes from wild or weed populations of the same species. There are non-cultivated quinoa plants. In their natural state, the seeds have a coating which contains bitter-tasting saponins, making them unpalatable. Most of the grain sold commercially has been processed to remove this coating; this bitterness has beneficial effects during cultivation, as it deters birds and therefore, the plant requires minimal protection. The genetic control of bitterness involves quantitative inheritance. Although lowering the saponin content through selective breeding to produce sweeter, more palatable varieties is complicated by ≈10% cross-pollination, it is a major goal of quinoa breeding programs, which may include genetic engineering.
The toxicity category rating of the saponins in quinoa treats them as mild eye and respiratory irritants and as a low gastrointestinal irritant. In South America, the saponins have many uses, including their use as a detergent for clothing and washing, as a folk medicine antiseptic for skin injuries. Additionally, high levels of oxalic acid are in the leaves and stems of all species of the genus Chenopodium, in the related genera of the family Amaranthaceae; the risks associated with quinoa are minimal, provided those parts are properly prepared and the leaves are not eaten to excess. Raw, uncooked quinoa is 13% water, 64% carbohydrates, 14% protein, 6% fat. Nutritional evaluations indicate that a 100 g serving of raw quinoa seeds is a rich source of protein, dietary fiber, several B vitamins, including 46% DV for folate, the dietary minerals magnesium and manganese. After cooking, the typical preparation for eating the seeds, quinoa is 72% water, 21% carbohydrates, 4% protein, 2% fat. In a 100 g serving, cooked quinoa provides 120 kcal and is a rich source of manganese and phosphorus, a moderate source of dietary fiber and the dietary minerals, iron and magnesium.
Quinoa is gluten-free. Because of the high concentration of protein, ease of use, versatility in preparation, potential for increased yields in controlled environments, it has been selected as an experimental crop in NASA's Controlled Ecological Life Support System for long-duration human occupied space flights; the plant's growth is variable due to the number of different subspecies and landraces. However, it is undemanding and altitude-hardy. Depending on the variety, optimal growing conditions are in cool climates with temperatures that vary between −4 °C during the night to near 35 °C during the day; some cultivars can withstand lower temperatures without damage. Light frosts do not affect the plants at any stage of development, except during flowering. Midsummer frosts during flowering, a frequent occurrence in the Andes, lead to sterilization of the pollen. Rainfall requirements are variable between the different cultivars, ranging from 300 to 1,000 mm during the growing season. Growth is optimal with well-distributed rainfall during early growth and no rain during seed maturation and harvesting.
Quinoa has been cultivated in the United States in the high elevation San Luis Valley of Colorado where it was introduced in 1983. In this high-altitude desert valley, maximum summer temperatures exceed 30 °C and night temperatures are about 7 °C. Due to the short growing season, North American cultivation requires short-maturity varieties of Bolivian origin. Several countries within Europe have grown quinoa on a commercia
Potato
The potato is a starchy, tuberous crop from the perennial nightshade Solanum tuberosum. In many contexts, potato refers to the edible tuber, but it can refer to the plant itself. Common or slang terms include tater and spud. Potatoes were introduced to Europe in the second half of the 16th century by the Spanish. Today they are a staple food in many parts of the world and an integral part of much of the world's food supply; as of 2014, potatoes were the world's fourth-largest food crop after maize and rice. Wild potato species can be found from the United States to southern Chile; the potato was believed to have been domesticated independently in multiple locations, but genetic testing of the wide variety of cultivars and wild species traced a single origin for potatoes. In the area of present-day southern Peru and extreme northwestern Bolivia, from a species in the Solanum brevicaule complex, potatoes were domesticated 7,000–10,000 years ago. In the Andes region of South America, where the species is indigenous, some close relatives of the potato are cultivated.
Following millennia of selective breeding, there are now over 1,000 different types of potatoes. Over 99% of presently cultivated potatoes worldwide descended from varieties that originated in the lowlands of south-central Chile, which have displaced popular varieties from the Andes; the importance of the potato as a food source and culinary ingredient varies by region and is still changing. It remains an essential crop in Europe eastern and central Europe, where per capita production is still the highest in the world, while the most rapid expansion in production over the past few decades has occurred in southern and eastern Asia, with China and India leading the world in overall production as of 2014. Being a nightshade similar to tomatoes, the vegetative and fruiting parts of the potato contain the toxin solanine and are not fit for human consumption. Normal potato tubers that have been grown and stored properly produce glycoalkaloids in amounts small enough to be negligible to human health, but if green sections of the plant are exposed to light, the tuber can accumulate a high enough concentration of glycoalkaloids to affect human health.
The English word potato comes from Spanish patata. The Spanish Royal Academy says the Spanish word is a hybrid of the Taíno batata and the Quechua papa; the name referred to the sweet potato although the two plants are not related. The 16th-century English herbalist John Gerard referred to sweet potatoes as "common potatoes", used the terms "bastard potatoes" and "Virginia potatoes" for the species we now call "potato". In many of the chronicles detailing agriculture and plants, no distinction is made between the two. Potatoes are referred to as "Irish potatoes" or "white potatoes" in the United States, to distinguish them from sweet potatoes; the name spud for a small potato comes from the digging of soil prior to the planting of potatoes. The word has an unknown origin and was used as a term for a short knife or dagger related to the Latin "spad-" a word root meaning "sword", it subsequently transferred over to a variety of digging tools. Around 1845, the name transferred to the tuber itself, the first record of this usage being in New Zealand English.
The origin of the word "spud" has erroneously been attributed to an 18th-century activist group dedicated to keeping the potato out of Britain, calling itself The Society for the Prevention of Unwholesome Diet. It was Mario Pei's 1949 The Story of Language. Pei writes, "the potato, for its part, was in disrepute some centuries ago; some Englishmen who did not fancy potatoes formed a Society for the Prevention of Unwholesome Diet. The initials of the main words in this title gave rise to spud." Like most other pre-20th century acronymic origins, this is false, there is no evidence that a Society for the Prevention of Unwholesome Diet existed. Potato plants are herbaceous perennials that grow about 60 cm high, depending on variety, with the leaves dying back after flowering and tuber formation, they bear white, red, blue, or purple flowers with yellow stamens. In general, the tubers of varieties with white flowers have white skins, while those of varieties with colored flowers tend to have pinkish skins.
Potatoes are cross-pollinated by insects such as bumblebees, which carry pollen from other potato plants, though a substantial amount of self-fertilizing occurs as well. Tubers form in response to decreasing day length, although this tendency has been minimized in commercial varieties. After flowering, potato plants produce small green fruits that resemble green cherry tomatoes, each containing about 300 seeds. Like all parts of the plant except the tubers, the fruit contain the toxic alkaloid solanine and are therefore unsuitable for consumption. All new potato varieties are grown from seeds called "true potato seed", "TPS" or "botanical seed" to distinguish it from seed tubers. New varieties grown from seed can be propagated vegetatively by planting tubers, pieces of tubers cut to include at least one or two eyes, or cuttings, a practice used in greenhouses for the production of healthy seed tubers. Plants propagated from tubers are clones of the parent, whereas those propagated from seed produce a range of different varieties.
There are about 5,000 potato varieties worldwide. Three thousand of them are found in the Andes alone in Peru, Ecuador and Colombia, they belong to eight or nine species, dependin
Chuño
Chuño is a freeze-dried potato product traditionally made by Quechua and Aymara communities of Bolivia and Peru, is known in various countries of South America, including Argentina, Bolivia and Peru. It is a five-day process, obtained by exposing a frost-resistant variety of potatoes to the low night temperatures of the Andean Altiplano, freezing them, subsequently exposing them to the intense sunlight of the day; the word comes from Quechua ch'uñu, meaning'frozen potato'. The existence of chuño dates back to before the time of the Inca Empire in the 13th century, based on findings that have been made of the product at various archaeological sites, they have been found at Tiwanaku, site of a culture which developed in the Collao Plateau, a geographic zone which includes territories of Bolivia and Peru. It had been described in 1590 by Spanish chronicler José de Acosta. Due to its portability, long shelf life, nutritional value, chuño was eaten by Inca soldiers on marches. Indeed Carl Troll argued that the nighttime sub-freezing temperatures of southern Peruvian highlands that allowed for chuño production favoured the rise of the Inca Empire.
Chuño is made during June and July, during which time the temperatures reach around −5 °C at elevations of over 3,800 metres. After harvest, potatoes are selected for the production of chuño small ones for ease of processing; these small potatoes are spread on flat ground, allowed to freeze with the low night temperatures and dehydrate in the daytime, for about three nights. This process results in natural freeze-drying. By the end of this process around May, the potatoes are taken to chuñochinapampas – flat areas where the potatoes can be laid out; the term is Aymara in origin and translates to “the place where the chuño is made”. Once they make it to the chuñochinapampas, they are trampled by foot; this eliminates what little water is still retained by the potatoes, removes the skins, enabling subsequent freezing and drying. They remain as they are depending on weather conditions. During the process of manually squeezing water out of the potatoes via stepping on them, whole families will participate.
The previous freeze-drying breaks down cell walls, making it easier to remove water from the potatoes. They build a small pile of potatoes with their feet and "dance" on the pile, removing the skins as they do so; this will not remove the skins, so the remaining skin is removed by hand afterwards. Starting from this basic freeze-dry process, two varieties are obtained: White chuño is obtained by washing the frozen potatoes; the washing may take various forms. In Bolivia, the potatoes are spread on blankets or straw and sprayed with water to moisten. In Peru, the frozen potatoes are transported to a river, deposited in pools; this washing takes about a week. The final step is drying in the sun; the result is now called chuño known as papas secas. In Bolivia, white chuño is called tunta. Black chuño is obtained directly from the original freezing and refreezing process; the product is not exposed to water again. Black chuño production has less regional variation than white chuño, is more to be kept and consumed by farmers than the more commercialized white chuño.
Once dried, with minimal care in storage, the product can last for a long time, sometimes decades. Consumption is varied, from desserts to prepared dishes, as well as chuño flour, an essential ingredient in many dishes of Peruvian cuisine. Chairo is one of the most traditional Bolivian soups and it is made with chuño, vegetables. In Bolivia, chuño is not considered the same as a regular potato. In certain recipes, chuño and potatoes should not be used interchangeably. Chairo, for example, is not considered the same without the ground chuño; the other ingredients - wheat, etc - can be substituted, but not the chuño. It is traditional in southern regions of Peru such as Arequipa and Puno. Another soup, this one made using whole chuño, is jakonta. More chuño can be eaten with a variety of sauces. Freeze-drying Food preservation List of dried foods
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