Physiological basis of quinoa adaptation to Northwest Argentina

BERTERO, H. D

Bumthang

Congreso; 14 Congress of the International Society of Ethnobiology.; 2014

International Society of Ethnobiology

Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) is cultivated in the Andes of NW Argentina since thousands of years ago. Although small in geographical range, its distribution encompasses a wide altitudinal, temperature and precipitation range, where quinoa is grown in small plots or inter-sown with maize (valleys) or potatoes (highlands). Our research group ultimate aim is to understand how natural selection and farmers decisions shaped quinoa landraces, more specifically, how phenology and growth traits condition local adaptation and determine genotype x environment interactions. Phenology, through strong changes in photoperiod and temperature sensitivity, explains most variation in altitudinal adaptation and GxE interactions. There are four maturity groups in the Andes, and three were detected in NW Argentina, one from the dry highlands, one from the dry valleys and one from the humid valleys. A four genetic group, from humid highlands was not characterized. To study this, a combination of sowing dates and photoperiod extensions in the field for one sowing date were used. There is also a very high G xE interaction for yield and its components, interestingly, seed number explains most variation in yield with changes in genotype ranking across environments. Also depending on environment, variation in seed number can be explained by either differences in biomass accumulation or partitioning to the grain (harvest index), some landraces show strong specific adaptation (highland or valleys), while others could be selected for wide adaptation (yield stability across environments). It has to be remained that all this was achieved besides conventional breeding and modern selection tools. Furthermore, quinoa landraces from NW Argentina represents 65 % of genetic variation (SSR markers) detected in a comparison with genotypes from Colombia to South Chile.