Discovering oca: a vital crop of the Andes

April 5, 2023

What’s brightly coloured, grows underground and looks like a potato but isn’t?  

Although they are completely unrelated, oca looks like and is cultivated much like the potato. Imagine waxy potatoes of variable sizes and shapes in vivid colours of red, purple, yellow or orange.

Native to the Andes in South America, oca (Oxalis tuberosa) has been a staple of rural Andean diets for centuries. It can be grown at higher elevations than the potato, is tolerant of poor soils, and can be grown in areas with low rainfall, making it an important crop for many of the farmers SeedChange works with in high altitude marginal farmlands of Bolivia.

Oca is important to local food security because of its high nutritional content and its role in crop rotations. It is often grown in association with other crops, such as maize, beans, and potatoes, as part of traditional crop rotation practices of the region. In fact oca is the second most planted crop in the Andes after potato.

Oca can be eaten raw, cooked, or dried and ground into flour for making bread or other baked goods.

While hundreds of varieties are still grown in the Andes, many are endangered and little consideration has been given to their genetic value. That’s why it’s so important to support the efforts of the farmers who preserve, improve and share this important crop.  

In recent years, there has been growing interest in oca outside of the Andes, with some farmers in Canada experimenting with growing the crop with varied success. Let us know if you have heard of any successful local oca growing experiments!