Quinoa: Origins and Development
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Quinoa: Origins and Development Maria C. Bruno Anthropology/Archaeology Department, Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA, USA
Basic Species Information One of the indigenous staple crops of Andean South America is the pseudocereal quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.). While it was traditionally placed in its own family Chenopodiaceae, recent genetic work located it within the monophyletic family Amaranthaceae. It is a tall, little-branched shrub that produces thousands of seeds in a large, exserted panicle (Fig. 1). There are many varieties that are primarily distinguished based on the color of both the plant and seed. Quinoa varieties range in color from white, yellow, red, and purple. Today, quinoa has gained popularity in North America, Europe, and Japan as a “superfood” because it is gluten-free and high in protein. Quinoa continues to be an important food in indigenous communities throughout the Andean highlands of Peru, Bolivia, and parts of southern Colombia, northern Chile, and western Argentina (Fig. 2). It is a hardy crop well adapted to dry, cold Andean climates (Risi & Galwey 1984). The wild progenitor of domesticated quinoa has not yet been definitively identified, but there are several potential populations. The most
commonly recognized wild species associated with the crop is known as ajara or quinoa negra for the black seeds it produces (Chenopodium quinoa var. melanospermum Hunziker or C. quinoa spp. milleanum Aellen). It shares the same distribution as quinoa and is considered to be its companion weed. Another common, blackseeded Andean species is C. hircinum Schrader, which is distributed along the eastern slopes of the Andes, valleys of Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina (Wilson 1990).
Major Domestication Traits Through artificial selection by Andean huntergatherers who collected, managed, and eventually cultivated wild Chenopodium stands, the plant, and particularly its seeds, underwent several morphological changes. Domesticated Chenopodium quinoa plants have larger, morecompact inflorescences than their wild counterparts, and the seeds do not easily disperse. While whole plants do not commonly preserve in the archaeological record, carbonized seeds are very common. The seed underwent several changes that archaeobotanists can observe using a combination of standard microscopy with 5 to 100X magnification and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with magnifications of between 500 and 5,000X. The standards for identifying differences in wild and domesticated Chenopodium populations were first established
C. Smith (ed.), Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2, # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014
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Quinoa: Origins and Development
Quinoa: Origins and Development, Fig. 1 Domesticated quinoa field on the Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia
by researchers who studied Chenopodium domestication in Eastern North America (C. berlandieri ssp. jonesianum). Andean archaeobotanists consider a suite of traits to identify domesticated quinoa: seed diameter, seed coat thickness a
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