Chuño: Andean freeze-drying of potatoes
Chuño: liofilización andina de la papa
- Date
- c. 500 CE · confidence low
- Place
- Tiwanaku, Ingavi, La Paz, Bolivia
- Credited to
- Peoples of the altiplano (Tiwanaku, Inca)
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Potatoes are frozen at night, trodden to expel the water and sun-dried at high altitude: a natural freeze-drying process that preserves them for years. It sustained the Andean state storehouses.
The technique is undoubtedly pre-Hispanic, but its origin cannot be precisely dated; it is associated with Tiwanaku because of the scale of its altiplano economy.
What it led to
- food reserves against bad years
- supplying Inca armies and workers
- the principle behind industrial freeze-drying