Quinoa farmers increase yields using nuclear-derived practices

Although it was domesticated five millennia ago, quinoa is one of those foods that was practically unknown outside of Peruvian highlands until very recently, when nutrition-conscious consumers learned of its richness in proteins, amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins and minerals. Once providing sustenance to the Inca civilization that flourished there in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, it was chosen as a food for NASA astronauts on space journeys in the twentieth century, and the United Nations declared 2013 the Year of Quinoa.

While all of this recognition is certainly positive, today’s quinoa production also faces a harsh reality in terms of the frequent droughts, soil salinity, frost, hail, wind, flooding and abiotic stress present in the Peruvian Andes that add up to reduce its productivity. Read more.