Phenotypic Diversity of Quinoa Landraces Cultivated in the Ecuadorian Andean Region: In Situ Conservation and Detection of Promising Accessions for Breeding Programs

Hipatia Delgado, César Tapia, Elsa Helena Manjarres-Hernández, Edwin Borja, Edwin Naranjo and Juan Pedro Martín ()
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Hipatia Delgado: Departamento de Biotecnología-Biología Vegetal, Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Agronómica, Alimentaria y de Biosistemas, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Avda, Puerta de Hierro 2-4, 28040 Madrid, Spain
César Tapia: Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Agropecuarias, Santa Catalina, Panamericana Sur Km, 1 vía Tambillo, Quito 170201, Ecuador
Elsa Helena Manjarres-Hernández: Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia, Tunja 150003, Colombia
Edwin Borja: Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Universidad de Valencia, C/Doctor Moliner 50, Burjassot, 46100 Valencia, Spain
Edwin Naranjo: Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Agropecuarias, Santa Catalina, Panamericana Sur Km, 1 vía Tambillo, Quito 170201, Ecuador
Juan Pedro Martín: Departamento de Biotecnología-Biología Vegetal, Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Agronómica, Alimentaria y de Biosistemas, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Avda, Puerta de Hierro 2-4, 28040 Madrid, Spain

Agriculture, 2024, vol. 14, issue 3, 1-21

Abstract: Quinoa ( Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) is an ancestral crop in the Ecuadorian Andean region, and its landraces have always been of great social and food importance for the native population. Currently, there is no updated information about their phenotypic diversity and conservation status nor about the changes that have occurred in the last decades. A total of 268 accessions of quinoa landraces collected at two different times (1978–1988 and 2014–2015) in three representative Ecuadorian Andean provinces (Imbabura, Cotopaxi and Chimborazo) were evaluated for forty agro-morphological (17 quantitative and 23 qualitative) traits. Most of the quantitative traits showed high variability, some of them with great importance for commercialization and germplasm selection for breeding programs (e.g., panicle width, grain width, 1000-grain weight or seed yield per plant). Ten quantitative and eleven qualitative descriptors were significantly different between both collections. Regarding the presence/absence of saponin, all the accessions collected four decades ago had saponin, while it was found in only 18% of accessions collected more recently. The phenotypic relationships in the dendrogram did not show clustered accessions by their geographical origin or by collection. A selection index allowed us to detect a few accessions recently collected in Chimborazo with high promises for future breeding programs, with high seed yields per plant values and a reduced or no saponin content. The agro-morphological information obtained may be very useful for the suitable management and conservation of this ancestral plant genetic resource, both on the farm by indigenous farming communities and ex situ by the Germplasm Bank of the Ecuadorian National Institute for Agricultural Research (INIAP).

Keywords: agro-morphological descriptors; on-farm conservation; native quinoas; promising germplasm; selection index (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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