Quinoa: From Experimentation to Production in Turkey

Quinoa: From Experimentation to Production in Turkey YazarA. 1, Sezen S.M. 2, Tekin S. 3, İncekaya Ç. 4 1 Irrigation and Agricultural Structures Department, Çukurova University, Adana, Turkey. yazarat@cu.edu.tr 2 Irrigation and Agricultural Structures Department, Çukurova University, Adana, Turkey. smsezen@cu.edu.tr 3 Biosystem Engineering Department, Sutcuimam University, Kahramanmaraş, Turkey. stekin@ksu.edu.tr 4 Agricultural Provincial Directorate, Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Animal Husbandary, Adana, Turkey. cigdemincekaya@gmail.com Abstract For sustainable agricultural production in the changing environmental conditions; the agricultural practices and cropping systems should be reorganized by considering these new circumstances. One of the approaches for this purpose is to investigate and include in the cropping system plant species which can tolerate abiotic stresses and adaptable to unfavorable conditions. Quinoa was first introduced in Turkey through the SWUP-MED project Sustainable water use securing food production in dry areas of the Mediterranean region, which has supported the adaptation and development of climate-proof food crops that better utilize agricultural areas in Mediterranean countries affected by climate changes such as erratic rainfalls, drought, salinity and other associated stresses. The research activities have mainly focused on agronomic, and biological aspects of quinoa, assessing the potential impact of quinoa in Turkish agro-ecosystems. The outputs from agronomical trials have been utilized for crop protocols to better manage and plan the cultivation of quinoa under different environmental conditions. In this paper, we present some results of the field experiments carried out at Cukurova University and Soil Water Resources Research Station at Tarsus, and quinoa production activities all over Turkey. Recently, hundreds of farmers in various regions have started producuing quinoa. Experimental results indicated positive response of quinoa to irrigation using saline drainage water as well as fresh water in comparison to rainfed quinoa. Grain yields ranging from 1500 to 6300 kg/ha were obtained under the Mediterranean climatic conditions. The yields obtained form farmers fields range form 500 to 3500 kg/ha. The current market for quinoa in Turkey is very limited. A widespread effort is necessary to educate people in Turkey about what quinoa is and how to cook it before the market will

expand a great deal. An international market exists for quinoa with quinoa available for sale in most health food stores and hipermarkets in the Turkey. Quinoa consumption was limited to consumers with knowledge of health foods. Keywords: quinoa; deficit irrigation; saline irrigation; production potential Introduction Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) is a traditional Andean seed crop cultivated 5000 years ago in the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes. Quinoa is a crop that resists a combination of adverse factors (Jacobsen et al. 2003). It is generally less affected by frost than most other crop species. It is salt-tolerant crop (Gómez-Pando et al. 2010; Ruiz-Carrasco et al. 2011), showing a yield reduction of 50% when saline water of 40 ds m 1 was applied compared with fresh water (Razzaghi et al. 2011). Quinoa has several resistance mechanisms to water stress that allow the plant to adapt to arid and semi-arid regions (Jensen et al. 2000; Jacobsen et al. 2003). Potential yield of quinoa in optimal conditions varies according to climate, soil, sowing date and genetic material. Quinoa is also rapidly gaining interest throughout the world (Jacobsen 2003) because of its robust character and high nutritional value. The seeds of quinoa are high in protein and contain an excellent balance of all of the aminoacids essential to the human diet (Repo-Carrasco et al. 2003). In addition, the grains are rich in vitamin and minerals (Comai et al. 2007). In recent years, the cultivation of quinoa has shifted from being a crop for local consumption in the Andean countries of Bolivia and Peru to become a cash crop for export to North America and Europe. Currently, the average yield of quinoa is less than 1 ton per ha (FAO, 2012; Jacobsen, 2011). Quinoa is produced and marketed as an organic crop and sold at very high end-user prices. International prices of quinoa were on average 3000 USD per ton in 2013, and between 3500 8000 USD per ton for particular varieties. However, payments to the farmers (farm-gate prices) were about one-third of these prices (Small 2013 and FAO 2013). Bolivia and Peru are the main quinoa producing countries in the World. In Bolivia, quinoa production expanded from 63,000 ha in 2009 to 104,000 hectares in 2012, producing a total of 58,000 tons. In Peru, the production of quinoa increased from 30,000 tons in 2009 to 44,000 tons in 2012 (Pedersen et al. 2016). USA is the main importer of quinoa from Bolivia and Peru (FAO 2013) but also EU-27 has imported 6913 tons of quinoa from Bolivia and Peru in 2012 of which the majority originates from Bolivia (CBI, 2012). The most important European importers of quinoa are France, the

Netherlands and Germany. So far, there is only a minor domestic production of quinoa in Europe and according to FAO (2012) no production, export or import of Quinoa is reported for Turkey. Quinoa is also gluten free. There are several drivers that imply that the gluten free product category will continue to grow in the next ten years. Firstly, the coeliac disease is regarded as one of the most under-diagnosed diseases in the world. Secondly, health as a motive for buying gluten free products is increasing and finally, food companies have large incentives to produce this type of products due to the high added value that they provide. Consequently, a huge market potential for gluten free commodities (including quinoa) exists in Europe and other high income regions. A disadvantage is that quinoa seed has to be cleaned for saponine before consumption and yields are relatively low compared with other crops. Nevertheless, the fact that quinoa is drought and salt tolerant with an increasing and high market price, organically produced with a high protein content and gluten free could make quinoa a new promising exporting crop among farmers in Turkey and the Mediterranean region in the years to come. Moreover quinoa is a crop with ample amounts of antioxidants, micronutrients and essential amino acids (Jacobsen et. al 2013). Quinoa is a new crop in Turkey. Quinoa has been introduced for the first time within the Sustainable water use securing food production in dry areas of the Mediterranean region (SWUP-MED) Project carried out between the years of 2009-2012. The development of climate-proof food crops that better utilize agricultural areas in Mediterranean countries affected by climate change has been supported by the SWUP-MED project. A number of researches on quinoa were conducted in Cukurova University for four years within the project. The first study was an adaptation experiment for evaluating yield performance of 10 quinoa varieties (L3, 4, 5, 10, 15, 23, 25, 28, 36, 52) under the Mediterranean conditions. The varieties selected for adaptability trials included a range of species and morphological types that have agronomic potential. Q52 (titicaca) and Q36 (puno) perfomed better than other varieties tested (Yazar et al., 2013). Field experiments were set up in order to evaluate the yield response of quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd. cv. Titicaca) to irrigation with saline and fresh water under Mediterranean climate from 2010 to 2012 in Adana, Turkey. Irrigation treatments in 2010 and 2011

comprised of full irrigation with fresh water (FIF), full irrigation with saline water of different salt concentrations (40, 30, 20, 10 ds m 1 ), deficit irrigations with fresh water (50%, 75% of full irrigation), partial root-zone drying, and deficit irrigation with saline water of 40 ds m 1 (50%). In 2012, in addition to the full irrigation treatments, two deficit irrigation levels of 67% and 33% of full irrigation with fresh or saline (30, 20, 10 ds m 1 ) water were considered. The results indicated that grain yields were slightly reduced by irrigation water salinity up to 30 ds m 1 compared with fresh water irrigation. Salinity and drought stress together interfered considerably with crop grain and biomass yields. However, salinity stress alone did not interfere with grain and biomass yield significantly; therefore, quinoa may be defined as a crop tolerant to salinity. Yield parameters such as aboveground biomass, seed yield and harvest index suggested a good adaptation of quinoa cv. Titicaca to Mediterranean environments. Table 1. Grain yield, irrigation water applied, dry matter yield (DM), seasonal crop water use (ET), water productivity (WP), and irrigation water use efficiency (IWUE) data of Quinoa under different treatments in the Mediterrranean region of Turkey in 2009. Treatments Irrigation (mm) ET (mm) Grain Yield (kg/ha) 1000 Seed Weight (g) DM (g/m 2 ) Plant Height (cm) HI % IWUE kg/m³ WP kg/m³ FIF 383 450a 2120 2.6 1932.5 130 52.3 0.55b 0.47b 4.5a DI 202 343b 1691 2.2 1812.5 113 48.2 0.84a 0.49b 3.0c PRD 202 321b 1873 2.1 1649.2 116 53.1 0.93a 0.58a 2.8c FIS 383 462a 1784 2.4 1917.9 127 48.1 0.46b 0.39c 3.9b LSD 58 ns ns ns ns 0.073 0.087 0.94 The Danish-bred quinoa cultivar, Titicaca, was irrigated with fresh and saline water whose electrical conductivity (ECw) ranging from 0.26 to 40 ds m -1. The growth, yields and responses to drought and salinity stresses of plant were investigated under conditions of full irrigation, deficit irrigation and partial rootzone drying (PRD) with fresh and saline water along with rainfed (nonirrigated) conditions. Plant growth parameters such as plant height, leaf area index (LAI), dry matter and grain yield showed that Titicaca variety of quinoa is well adapted to the Mediterranean environmental conditions. This result is in agreement with the results of researches conducted in Italy, Morocco and Syria which are suggest that quinoa cv. Titicaca could be cultivated successfully in Mediterranean climatic conditions (Lavini et al., 2014). The suitable sowing period of quinoa is March-April at low elevations and April- May at high altitudes in Turkey. The grain yield of quinoa ranged between 2.0 and 3.0 t ha -1 under non-stressed conditions by years. According to these results, grain yields of quinoa under non-stressed conditions vary depending on plant cultivars, sowing date and LAI

environmental conditions such as soil and climate. Irrigation of quinoa with saline water at ECw 5 ds m -1 salinity level did not cause yield loss or a decrease in plant growth, biomass and 1000 grain mass. In higher salt concentrations, in case the plant irrigated with water at ECw 10, 20, 30 and 40 ds m -1 salinity level, yield reductions were emerged in comparison non-stressed conditions. Grain yields of full irrigated quinoa at different salinity level in the years 2010, 2011 and 2012 are shown in Figure 1. ECw 10 ds m -1 and higher irrigation water salinity caused yield losses at rates ranging from 2% to 27.5%. On the other hand, quinoa could cope with high salinity in the root zone up to 40 ds m-1 of electrical conductivity of irrigation water, which many other crops couldn t tolerate this salinity level (Yazar et al, 2015). Table 3. Irrigation water applied (IWA), evapotranspiration (ET), grain yield (GY), dry matter (DM) yield, 1000-seed weight, water productivity (WP), irrigation water productivity (IWP), harvest index (HI), and GY reduction (GYR) values of quinoa for different irrigation treatments in 2010 Treatment IWA ET GY DM yield 1000-seed WP IWP HI GYR (mm) (kg ha 1 ) weight (g) (kg m 3 ) (%) (%) FIF 320 576 2986 6786 3.1 0.52 0.88 44 5.8 FIS 40 ds m 1 320 466 3169 6889 3.2 0.68 0.94 46 0.0 FIS 30 ds m 1 320 481 2164 4243 3.1 0.45 0.62 51 31.7 FIS 20 ds m 1 320 524 2362 4921 3.1 0.45 0.68 48 25.5 FIS 10 ds m 1 320 516 2735 5698 2.9 0.53 0.80 48 13.7 DIF 50% 160 348 1778 3951 2.5 0.51 1.00 45 43.9 DIF 75% 240 483 2316 5264 2.7 0.48 0.89 44 26.9 DIS 50% 160 322 1889 3935 2.9 0.59 1.07 48 40.4 NI 0 247 1714 3809 2.5 1.39 0.00 45 46.0 l.s.d. (P = 0.05) 54 877 1245 0.11 0.12 0.14 n.s. FIF, FIS: Full irrigation with fresh water or saline water; DIF, DIS: deficit irrigation with fresh water or saline water; NI, non-irrigated; n.s., not significant (P > 0.05) The field experiment was carried out during the growing season of 2014 and 2015 on the experimental field of Soil and Water Resources Research unit, Tarsus in the Mediterranean region of Turkey (Sezen et al, 2016). The station has a latitude of 37 01' N and, a longitude of 35 01' E and is at 10 m above mean sea level. The soil of experimental site is classified as Arikli silty-clay-loam with relatively high water holding capacity. The principal objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of drainage water applied with a line-source sprinkler system at different growth stages (early, vegetative, late vegetative, flowering and grain filling) quinoa grown in the Mediterranean region of Turkey in 2014 and 2015 on yield, yield components, vegetative growth, water use efficiency and salt accumulation in the plant rootzone. Total amount of drainage water applied to treatment (I1) was 344 and 400 mm; and

total amount of seasonal water use (ET) was 514, and 459 mm; and seasonal water use was 523, and 490 mm for two experimental years. As the amount of water applied decreased crop water use also decreased. Irrigation levels (I1-I4) influenced significantly quinoa yields and yield components. Maximum yield was obtained from the I1 in the drainage water as 4880-4510 kg ha -1 ; and the lowest yield was obtained from the rainfed treatment as 1880 and 1430 kg ha -1, respectively in experimental years (Table 4). Not only total yield, but also yield components increased with higher irrigation levels. The experimental results revealed that there was no significant difference the WUE among the treatments. WUE values varied from 0.95 to 1.03 kg m -3 in the first year; between 0.94-1.10 kg m-3 in the second year. Soil salinity values at the beginning of the season ranged between 0.63-0.72 ds m -1 and application of drainage water resulted in increased soil salinity up to 1.69 ds m -1. Soil salinity decreased with increasing depth in all treatments. In conclusion, full irrigation using drainage water is recommended for sprinkler irrigated quinoa in order to obtain higher and better quality yield in the Mediterranena region of Turkey. Thus, drainage water can safely be used in quinoa production without soil degradation in this region since the winter rainfalls are sufficient enough to leach salts out of crop root zone depth. Table 4. Grain yield, evapotranspiration (ET), irrigation water applied, water use efficiency (WUE) and irrigation water use efficiency (IWUE) values for the irrigation levels in the experimental years 1000 Years Irrigation Levels Yield kg/ha ET mm Irrigation mm WUE kg/m3 IWUE kg/m3 Seed weight, g I1 4880 (a) 514 344 0.95 0.87 3.6 (a) I2 4420 (b) 457 266 0.97 0.95 3.4 (a) 2014 I3 4100 (b) 401 193 1.02 1.15 3.1 (b) I4 3550 (c) 345 97 1.03 1.72 2.6 (c) I5 1880 (d) 320 20 0.59 0.00 2.4 (d) I1 4510 (a) 459 400 0.98 0.77 3.5 (a) I2 4240 (b) 385 309 1.10 0.91 3.2 (b) 2015 I3 3610 (c) 332 214 1.09 1.02 2.7 (c) I4 2860 (d) 267 114 1.07 1.25 2.1 (d) I5 1430 (e) 228 15 0.63 0.00 1.8 (e) Experiments were carried out at the Bornova experimental fields of Agricultural Faculty, Ege University, İzmir, Turkey during 2013 and 2014 main crop growing season in order to evaluate the effect of seven nitrogen levels (0, 50, 75, 100, 125, 150 and 175 kg ha -1 ) on the grain yield and some yield components of cultivar Q-52 of quinoa. Results indicated that the effects of nitrogen treatments and years on all characteristics tested were significant (Table 5). Nitrogen level of 150 kg ha -1 was proved to be the best level for nitrogen supplementation of

soil for grain yield (2.95 t ha -1 ) and crude protein (CP) content (16%) of quinoa under Mediterranean ecological conditions of Bornova (Geren, 2015). Table 4. Effect of different nitrogen levels on the yield and some yield components of quinoa N levels (ha -1 ) Grain yield (kg ha -1 ) ----- CP content of seed (%) 0 kg 927 7.9 50 kg 1340 9.1 75 kg 1896 11.1 100 kg 2446 13.1 125 kg 2807 14.8 150 kg 2953 15.8 175 kg 2519 16.5 Farmers perception of a new high value and drought resistant crop like quinoa in the Mediterranean region of Adana in Turkey was assessed and to specific farmers segments that could potentially adopt the crop were identified. This study is based on interviews and a survey of 92 farmers in Adana, Turkey. Turkey is represented in the EU-project SWUP-MED that focuses on sustainable land and water management in the Mediterranean region. Adana is located in the Mediterranean area close to the European market. Moreover, the Adana region is a semi-arid region with the possibility to irrigate (Pedersen et al. 2016). Moreover, a parallel study has been made to analyse the farmers power relations with intermediaries in Adana (Xhoxhi et al. 2014). From these interviews and previous experience with farmers adoption and barriers to adopt new crops we specifically addressed questions about farmers current crop production, farm size and their knowledge of quinoa. It is expected that the crop can provide higher profits and offer new market potentials due to the gluten free characteristic of the crop. By identifying segments, the product can be introduced and disseminated among those who appear more willing to adopt the new crop. In turn, the adopters could serve as an example for other farmers, thereby spreading knowledge and use of quinoa. Moreover, the study provided a list of potential barriers as well as advantages for adopting quinoa among farmers in Adana. Findings from this study indicate that farmers in Adana perceive quinoa as a likely crop to be adopted if it they can gain market access with the new crop. Farmers previous knowledge about the crop, concerns about drought and their access to irrigation and farm size seems to be important characteristics in determining a farmer s attitude towards the new crops.

To introduce a new crop it is important that the crop can provide a benefits to the farmers. The majority of farmers in Adana indicated that they would be interested to grow a new crop if it can deal with salinity and is resistant to drought. It may be the salt tolerance factor that is most important in this regard given the fact that most farmers apply some sort of irrigation in the region. Moreover, farmers perception of a new crop is highly related to the market conditions. More than 60 percent of the farmers reply that market availability has the highest priority to them compared with yield, crop price, ease of production and production costs, when deciding what crop to introduce in their production pattern. Ease of production and production costs are not major issues in regard to the adoption of a new crop. The second most important factor is crop yield followed by crop price (Pedersen et al. 2013). Most farmers had little if any knowledge about quinoa in Adana when the survey was carried out in 2011. However, novadays many farmers have gained knowledge about quinoa in Turkey. All the farmers said that when they consider the introduction of a new crop in their production system, they make a comparison between crops that they already produce and the new crop. First of all they look at the market availability, but also product prices, yield, production cost and ease of production are taken into account. A number of farmers perceive quinoa as a likely crop to be included in their crop rotation if the current prices can be obtained on the market. The creation of a market for quinoa in Turkey has several beneficial effects for the region. One of these benefits is in regard to production on soil with high levels of salinity that are not used for other crop production. A drawback of new crops like quinoa is the low yields compared to maize and wheat, especially in regard to local consumption where yield are regarded important. Furthermore, quinoa has a higher price in the international market compared to maize and wheat. Therefore, the low yield levels and high labor costs can be covered from the high price (Pedersen et al. 2016). In recent years a large number of farmers started to produce quinoa in different locations of Turkey. The reported yield values ranged from 500 to 1500 kg ha -1. Since quinoa is not in the agenda of the Ministry of Agriculture of Turkey, there is no official statistical data on quinoa production in the country. Yet quinoa fields are so rare in Turkish farming that the total acreage doesn't show on an agricultural census. A rough estimate puts the country's quinoa fields at 1,000 to 3,000 ha. Quinoa production in the country is realized in small fields less than 1.0 ha, however, there are a few producers planted on large fields (100 ha) in the Thrace region of Turkey. For more quinoa to grow in Turkey, farmers and researchers must find the right mix of varieties and environments.

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