Royal Visit

Princess Anne of the United Kingdom visited the International Potato Center (CIP by its Spanish acronym) in Lima, Peru, on July 9, 2007. The Princess Royal's stop at CIP while touring several countries in South America reflected her strong interest in agriculture and concern for the peoples of developing countries.

At the Zandstra Biodiversity Complex, the British royal viewed a display of the valuable biodiversity that CIP safeguards. She was particularly interested in the tremendous variety of shapes, sizes and colors of Andean potatoes. In the largest collection of its type in the world, CIP conserves almost 5,000 varieties of potato and thousands of varieties of sweetpotato and little known Andean roots and tubers. The diverse collection is a priceless source of crop variation to meet future challenges, including climate change.

CIP's Director General Pamela K. Anderson explaining to the Princess Royal the pachamanca, a traditional Peruvian cooking ceremony, where potatoes, vegetables and different types of meat are cooked with local herbs in a pit in the ground. To the left is Catherine Nettleton, the UK Ambassador to Peru.

The princess heard about CIP's work in fortifying sweetpotato with vitamins. Vitamin A deficiency puts millions of children at risk of blindness. In response, CIP has developed new varieties of orange-fleshed sweetpotatoes that are easy to grow, popular with children and proven to increase levels of vitamin A in the blood.

While at CIP, Princess Anne took part in a pachamanca, a traditional Peruvian event in which potatoes, vegetables, meat and herbs are cooked in a pit in the ground.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations ranks potato the third most important food crop in the world. It is especially central to the diets and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people in developing countries. The UK has been a major donor to CIP since 1972. In addition to core budget grants from the Department for International Development, the UK offers support to a number of CIP's special projects, including research on potato diseases in Peru and Bolivia and the development of orange-fleshed sweetpotato varieties in Africa.