Growing super grain quinoa in India

Abstract

Quinoa, Chenopodium quinoa, a primitive pseudo-grain used for food in the Andean region of South America mostly remains unknown to the world. Its nutritional and nurtaceutical benefits has gained global attention in the recent past. A very new crop for our Indian subcontinent, its cultivation is more challenging under diverse agro-climate of the country. Quinoa can perform successfully under almost all climate and environmental conditions of India and is thus considered a very hardy crop particularly for the rain-fed and draught affected zones being a very rich protein diet. FAO celebrated 2013 as the “Year of Quinoa†and since then a number of countries have initiated research and development on its cultivation technologies. Quinoa is an annual crop cultivated mainly as a rabi crop taking about 120-150 days to maturity. Quinoa production has been initiated in a few areas in India but it is un-organized, since scientific agro techniques have still not been standardized. Keeping in view DIBER (DRDO), Haldwani (Uttarakhand) initiated maiden scientific study during the year 2015 at multi locations in various centres of the institute to develop suitable package of practices for cultivation of quinoa. Apart from its cultivation, product formulation and their comparative evaluation has also been undertaken at the institute to standardize the performance of Indian quinoa with Andean quinoa.