​​​Alta Sierra Alfalfa Gives High Hopes to Farmers in the Atacama Desert and Beyond

27 November 2024

“Alfalfa is what our livelihoods depend on, what our animals eat. It is important for my family now, and it was for former generations – double the value,” says Mauricio Moyo, a smallholder farmer in the Putre region of Chile’s Atacama Desert. 

On land almost 3,600 meters above sea level that his family has cultivated for generations, Moyo is part of a large farming community growing a unique type of alfalfa that has thrived in isolation for centuries. It enables the Indigenous Aymara people to feed their livestock in the driest region on Earth. 

This highly resilient forage crop is known as Alta Sierra, an ancestral landrace brought to Chile by the Spanish Conquistadors more than 400 years ago.  

The plant’s ability to survive in a coastal desert “where nothing can exist,” as Charles Darwin said on his travels in South America in 1835, could prove vital to smallholder farmers who live in drought-prone areas and are struggling to adapt to the effects of climate change. 

Oases of lush green Alta Sierra fields appear in valleys surrounded by tall mountains made of rock and sand in the northern parts of the famous Atacama Desert. This area is so dry and desolate that NASA scientists have used it to simulate conditions on Mars for missions to the red planet in search of microbial life. 

Yet the characteristics of Alta Sierra are not yet fully understood. Perfectly adapted to saline soils that host high levels of boron and other minerals, its potential has barely been explored for future use in the region—and beyond. 

This is why scientists from Chile’s Institute of Agricultural Research (INIA) are now studying Alta Sierra’s characteristics. They are tapping into the traditional knowledge of Indigenous communities, like the Aymara, to help promote modern agricultural sustainability. 

“INIA has a lot of experience working with Indigenous communities, especially in other ancestral crops, such as quinoa,” says INIA researcher Luis Inostroza. “So, we want to be very respectful and hear from them how they want us to help them.” 

Alta Sierra is more than just forage for animals. The crop is an integral part of the region’s cultural heritage, stretching back to the 1500s, when the Aymara people played a key role as agriculturalists and herders in an agrarian economy controlled by their Spanish colonizers. 

Need for Seed

Alta Sierra, an ancestral alfalfa landrace introduced to the Atacama Desert 400 years ago, thrives in saline, high-boron soils at altitude. Maintained by generations of farmers, it holds key adaptations for agriculture in a changing climate.Credit: Crop Trust/ Luis Salazar

 

No other alfalfa variety can compete with Alta Sierra in the Atacama Desert. Sandra Montevilla, a farmer in the Camarones Valley, says she tried to grow new varieties of alfalfa but soon abandoned them because production dropped by 70 percent in the second year.  

While demand for the ancestral landrace is high, there is a lack of seed. And what is available is of poor quality, according to INIA scientists. 

“The number one problem is how to support this community with high-quality, high-yield seed,” Inostroza says. “We are planning molecular characterization of several different samples we collected so we can shed light on what Alta Sierra is all about.” 

Across Chile, INIA is now working to expand cultivation of this alfalfa variety to the most important livestock systems in the country, especially in areas with depleted soils and prone to drought. 

 

Wild Relatives 

Mauricio and his "sweet" alfalfa from Putre, 3600m up in the Atacama Desert, reflect his heritage and the region's unique terroir. Generations of care have adapted his Alta Sierra alfalfa to thrive in this harsh, high-altitude environment. Credit: Crop Trust/ Luis Salazar 

 

Plant scientists often use a method called pre-breeding to identify and introduce novel traits that could make crops more resilient to the effects of climate change. This involves tapping into the massive genetic pool that is represented by the wild relatives of cultivated crops. These second or third cousins that have survived on their own in harsh natural conditions for millennia can help generate new cultivated varieties with resilient qualities, such as drought tolerance and disease resistance. 

INIA’s emerging status as a leader in alfalfa breeding follows nearly a decade of research that started with the Crop Trust’s Crop Wild Relatives (CWR) Project in 2015. Financed by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), the CWR Project funded pre-breeding initiatives for 16 crops, including alfalfa.  

Under the CWR Project, Alan Humphries of SARDI scoured alfalfa genebanks around the globe to put together a core collection of 69 accessions originating in 15 countries, including Turkey and Iran, the crop’s region of origin. This pool of diversity provided a foundation for future research and led to INIA’s release of Chile’s first-ever alfalfa variety—called Kauke—this year. 

While Alta Sierra is considered an ancestral landrace, and not a wild relative, its abundant genetic diversity and adaptation to local conditions are almost equally valuable for potential use in developing new climate-resilient varieties of alfalfa.  

So, recently, Humphries and other scientists from INIA’s partner organizations visited the northern region of the Atacama Desert to speak with farmers who grow Alta Sierra. They visited the port city of Arica—which experiences almost no rainfall—the town of Putre, and the Camarones Valley, where forage alfalfa, corn, onions and garlic are grown on agricultural estates. 

“I have been here before, but it still blows my mind,” Humphries says. “It's one of the few places left in the world where farmers are still working with traditional landraces and ancestral varieties without introducing modern varieties. The diversity in the plants is just amazing.” 

When the CWR Project ended in 2022, INIA created a national alfalfa breeding program that now focuses on supporting smallholder farmers across the country, including those living in the Atacama Desert. 

Farmers are enthusiastic about the results. They now hope that INIA will help them mechanize agricultural production and optimize the use of water on land that their ancestors farmed before climate change. 

“I use the same techniques as my father and grandfather did,” Moyo says on his farm in Putre. “We were told to love our Pachamama, our Mother Earth.”

But they will need all the help they can get. 

 

Categories: For Educators, For Partners, For Students, Crop Wild Relatives, Alfalfa, Climate Change, Sustainable Agriculture, English, Factsheets