The conservation of local sweet potato varieties in Indonesia, and the documentation of farmers’ knowledge about their varieties was the objective of a research project initiated by CIP (International Potato Center, Lima), supported by SDC and implemented by CIP’s regional office in Bogor. As a social scientist with CIP, I set up the collaborative project organization with Indonesian agricultural research institutions and universities. We built a methodical framework for the study and organized several plant collection missions, including two to West Papua.
For an overview on sweet potato in the Papua highlands, see CIP’s annual report 1994. (pp. 12–15). In CIP’s Programm report from 1997–98 my mentor for this work, Gordon Prain, talks in detail about „Farmer maintenance of sweet potato diversity in Asia“ (pp. 317–28). The chapter also summarizes the findings of our sweet potato research with farmers in the West Papuan highlands.
Our research was embedded into CIP’s global work on sweet potato, and benefited from exchange and coordination between agronomists, plant breeders, and anthropologists. Most important: we learned from farmers how they managed their agrobiodiversity in situ – having built over time an impressive sweet potato varietal diversity as an economic, social and ecological resource.
