Proceedings of a Workshop, Pucallpa, Peru.

The Central Amazon of Peru is part of an important centre of diversity and domestication of peanuts, hot pepper, cassava and other crops (Salick 1989). Both native Indian and mestizo inhabitants preserve such crop diversity in fields and home gardens through a dynamic flow of genetic material and traditional seed management. Community seed supply is complex depending on social relations within and among communities. The most common forms of seed supply are: (1) self-supply, where a farmer multiplies his or her own see; (2) purchase, or an exchange system based on cash; (3) loan, which usually entails returning an amount of seed 25-100% greater than was originally borrowed, and (4) gift, a system of community support based on kinship relations. This paper attempts to describe the seed supply systems and postharvest management of cassava, maize, bean, peanuts, chillies pepper and cotton used by the Shipibo-Conibo, Ashaninkas and Mestizo ethnic groups of the Peruvian Central Amazon