Quinoa. Atul Bhargava
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conditions (Jacobsen, 2003).
A partnership between the Danish Company Eghøjgaard and the Egyptian Natural Oil Company (NATOIL) was formed in 2007 that aimed to develop quinoa in Egypt. The requirements of temperate temperatures during flowering, short day-length to flower and produce seeds for most genotypes mean that quinoa is suitable for the Egyptian winter climate. Adaptation and selection work is underway through a DANIDA-supported project to select the best genotype with respect to length of growing period, plant height, flowering time quality and many other characters. Other properties of quinoa for its successful development in Egypt are its drought resistance, high water use efficiency, good growth in poor soils and salt tolerance. In Ismalia, the salinity in the irrigation water is 3000 ppm, which would make most other crops suffer severely. In Egypt, the fertile farmland area along the Nile and in the delta is under pressure from infrastructure and urban development. Thus new farmland is often poor reclaimed desert land with salinity problems. Quinoa can therefore play a key role in food production in reclaimed desert land. Quinoa was put in formal field trials in the Sinai Peninsula, with 13 varieties and strains being tested in the deserts of South Sinai governorate (near Nuwaiba city) (Shams, 2011) and its introduction in the desert lands proved to be a success.
3.7 Experiments in Asia
The experimental introduction of quinoa in Asia has been quite impressive, with the crop showing good adaptation and abundant yield in the Indian subcontinent. In Pakistan, the crop has been experimentally cultivated in Faisalabad, Chakwal and Bahawalpur. Quinoa was introduced in Pakistan in 2007 in the central Punjab to lessen people’s dependence on conventional foods (Munir et al., 2012). Continuous experimentation has demonstrated that quinoa accessions showed variation in their seed yield with respect to change in the growing environments, with some accessions showing good stability in the new environment. Under uncertain and unpredictable climatic conditions, quinoa gave promising seed yields, proving its domestication a success in the Pakistani conditions. The accessions of Danish origin with short stature set seed in the shortest time, whereas the Chilean sea-level accessions gave most viable seed with a medium duration life cycle. A fiscal balance sheet displaying coefficient of profitability has shown that quinoa has the potential to be a new cash crop in the region and could be a sound choice for farmers who have small land holdings (Munir et al., 2012). Thus quinoa could be an important new crop for Pakistan, providing highly nutritive and versatile food products for the population and a new raw material for industry. In particular, it could be cultivated in many of the marginal environments afflicted by drought or salinity stress, which currently suffer from very low productivity (Jacobsen et al., 2002). The crop has a promising future in the northern areas, where conventional agriculture is difficult due to loss of fertile soil and non-availability of suitable crops to improve the agricultural economy. Quinoa’s adaptation to severe winters would help alleviate poverty in those areas. It can also help improve food production in the dry western mountains of Balochistan, where the degraded land and declining ground water resources severely hamper production of many crops.
India, located between 8° and 38°N and 68° and 93.5°E, exhibits enormous diversity for agroclimatic regions and edapho-climatic conditions (Bhargava et al., 2006). Research on quinoa has been underway since the early 1990s at the National Botanical Research Institute (NBRI), Lucknow, in an area situated in the heart of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. The Indo-Gangetic Plain, a region covering a large area of India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh, is characterized by fertile soils and an abundant supply of water (Aggarwal et al., 2004). The research at NBRI increased greatly in the year 2000, when extensive field trials were performed in cooperation with many departments, namely genetics and plant breeding, lipid chemistry, plant pathology, experimental taxonomy and biomass biology. Trials in the Indo-Gangetic Plain (120 m above sea level) have shown that the crop can be successfully cultivated in this region, with many cultivars giving high grain yields (Bhargava et al., 2007b). A thorough assessment of yield potential of quinoa germplasm lines of diverse origin showed that 41% of the lines were high yielding. The results reflected greater adaptability of the Chilean and US germplasm lines to North Indian agroclimatic conditions (Bhargava et al., 2007b). Thus quinoa could serve as an alternative winter crop for the North Indian Plains and other subtropical regions having similar agroclimatic and edaphic conditions (Bhargava et al., 2007b). This is important for India because a large proportion of the population has little access to a protein-rich diet, rice and wheat being the principal food crops. Quinoa’s highly proteinaceous grain can help to make diets more balanced in this region and can play an important role in combating ‘silent hunger’ prevalent among poor populations who have little access to a protein-rich diet. Quinoa can be termed ‘underutilized’, especially for India, since in spite of its wide adaptability and nutritional superiority, its commercial potential has remained untapped. Quinoa can play a major role in the future diversification of agricultural systems in India, not only in the Himalayan region, but also in the North Indian Plains.
Vietnam is another country where quinoa yield trials were held and the crop has shown potential for future studies. The growth period of quinoa was short (87–96 days) and similar to that observed in Kenya. Seed yields up to 1125–1685 kg/ha and biomass yields up to 9 t/ha were obtained. Quinoa has also been field tested in Japan in the climatic conditions of Southern Kanto District (Yamashita et al., 2007). The maximum yield was obtained in the Sea-level type variety sown in March to May, followed by the Valley type variety sown in July.
3.8 Concluding Remarks
The distribution of quinoa in different agroclimatic regions and its successful cultivation in various parts of the world make us believe that this crop is highly adaptable and could be used to diversify agriculture in new regions. However, detailed trials are needed before successfully recommending this crop in newer areas. Also, the cultivators need to be informed of the immense economic potential of quinoa, so that they may be able to readily accept quinoa over previously cultivated traditional crops.
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