The actual diffusion of quinoa across all the continents (North America, Europe, Asia and Africa) has occurred in diverse ways and has different objectives. But an international network that primarily includes researchers and farmers could provide an opportunity for better characterization and understanding of this species.
The biogeography of quinoa, an ancestral and highly nutritional crop, provides a global foresight of this underutilized crop in world agriculture, and also shows its broad geographic extension. Several aspects linked to its high genetic diversity and plasticity demonstrate that quinoa could become one of the most important crops of the South American Andes and could extend its area of cultivation in other contexts in the world giving, due respect to the farmers’ rights for the local communities from the areas of domestication.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to express their appreciation to farmers who cared for their seeds for telling us their stories, and also to projects that made possible funding of reported research activities BRG08, IMAS (ANR07 BDIV 016-01) and IRSES (PIRSES-GA-2008-230862). We also gratefully acknowledge Dr Eric Jellen (BYU, USA), Dr Daniel Bertero (UBA, Argentina) and Ingrid von Baer (AgroGen, Chile) for their images of quinoa grown in Bolivia, Argentina and Chile, respectively.
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