Chilean Quinoa

Chilean Quinoa
In 1551, 10 years after taking possession of Chile for Spain Pedro de Valdivia wrote King Charles V concerning the new colony:
I can tell you truthfully of the goodness of this country….. cattle like those of Peru [llamas, vicunas] prosper, with wool that drags on the ground; it abounds in all the foods the Indians plant for their subsistence, such as corn, potatoes,quinoa, madi, chili and beans.  The people are large, tame, friendly and white, and of attractive faces, men as well as women, all dressed in wool in their style, although the clothing is somewhat crude.[1] (all translations mine). 
This was the earliest mention of quinoa, (or quinua, from the Quechua) Chenopodium quinua, the “mother grain” of the Incas, and although Valdivia wrote enthusiastically, if notalways truthfully (the native Mapuche were neither friendly nor tame—they killed him two years later), of the country’s blessings, he didn’t mention quinoa again. 

Quinoa. Photo: Cancosa
Quinoa is not a grain; member of the grass family like the wheat, barley, oats and rice familiar to the conquistadors, or the American maize (corn) they found and readily adopted. It is an “herb,” a leafy plantwith no woody stem and abundant small seeds, unlike any plant cultivated for seeds in Spain.  While the conquistadors ate it, comparing it to rice, it remained stigmatized as low status “Indian food,” and did not become part of the colonist’s agriculture.[2]

Today, 450 years later, quinoa is finally achieving recognition beyond indigenous communities. And while it has been subject to the usuallevels of marketing hype (at left) quinoa’s high levels of protein, balanced amino acid composition, pleasant taste, and easy cooking qualities have made it popular with both the health food and foodie communities.  And its potential for improving diet in high altitude and dry environments has led the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN to name it as “one of the crops destined to offerfood security in the next century.”[3]

Quinoa Super Diet

Quinoa origins      
Photo: Quinoa Wikipedia

The earliest evidence of quinoa in archaeological sties is from Peru in levels thought to date to about 7,000 years ago. In northern Chile quinoa seeds were being collected by 5,200 BP (before present), and they were found in an archaeological site on a tributary of the Rio Maipo nearSantiago from about 3,000 BP. Quinoa was attractive to hunting and gathering people both because of its nutritional value and because it could be stored without suffering losses from rodents and insects: quinoa seeds have a bitter soap-like saponin coating which makes them unpalatable unless they have been washed.  Domestication probably occurred by 3,500 years ago in the area surrounding LakeTiticaca where the plant’s greatest genetic diversity is found.[4]

 Quinoa, corn and potatoes were the principal crops of the Inca and their predecessor from Columbia south to northern Chile and Argentina. Quinoa’s remarkable ability, shared with potatoes, to grow at altitudes over 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) made it the dominant seed crop at high altitudes.  In Chile it was grown from high altitudes tosea level, and from dry northern valleys to wet Chiloe Island, off the south-central coast. This great adaptability to differing climates and altitudes is the result of indigenous farmers’ selection of the most promising varieties for their particular location, producing thousands of local varieties in five major categories:  Chilean sea level quinoas adapted to low elevations, long days and highrainfall; Andean valley quinoas that grow at 2,000 to 4,000 meters; subtropical quinoas from the eastern Bolivian Andes;salar quinoas adapted to soils with high salt content; and Antiplanic varieties from around Lake Titicaca at 3500-4000 feet which are adapted to a short growing season and are frost resistant.[5]

While quinoa continued to be cultivated by many indigenous Andean communities...