Society for Economic and Social Promotion and Development of La Palma - SODEPAL

Projects

Agrodiversity Centre

The Centro de Agrodiversidad de La Palma (CAP) is an organism of the Cabildo Insular de La Palma, managed by the Sociedad de Promoción y Desarrollo Económico de la isla de La Palma S.A.U. (Sodepal), whose main objective is to prevent the loss of the rich agricultural diversity that has been accumulating on the island over the years and which is threatened by the progressive abandonment that the agricultural sector has been experiencing in recent decades in the Canary Islands.

To this end, different activities are carried out, such as the collection of plant material and its subsequent multiplication, conditioning and conservation, the maintenance of plant collections in the field, the study of all the conserved material and the carrying out of dissemination activities.

The CAP currently conserves some 300 seed accessions, as well as collections of traditional varieties of potatoes, garlic, yams and sweet potatoes. Collections of traditional fruit trees are also kept in different plots scattered all over the island.

Furthermore, since the creation of the centre, the aim has been to make all this plant material available to the island's own farmers.

The work carried out at the centre in the conservation and study of the plant genetic resources present on the island can facilitate a greater present or future use of these resources, so as to increase the economic potential of local agricultural production, favouring productive diversification and making it possible to obtain higher incomes in rural areas.

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