Bolivia’s President Evo Morales has been appointed a Special Ambassador to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations for his work promoting the quinoa plant as an important way to alleviate hunger. The ceremony, held yesterday in Rome, heralds the UN’s International Year of the Quinoa 2013. Morales not only praised the nutritional value of quinoa, which he argued is rich in protein, micronutrients and unsaturated fats, but also its value as a crop. The quinoa plant is unusual in that it has been preserved in its natural form due to traditional knowledge and practices of the indigenous Andean people. “Quinoa has been cultivated for more than 7,000 years and is presented as a worthy alternative amid the current food crisis. It can achieve good yields and is very resistant to frost,” said Morales, a former small-scale quinoa farmer. Given quinoa’s ability to adapt to areas with relative humidity of up to 88 per cent as well as extreme altitudes, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva supported this position, stressing the role quinoa can play for food insecure countries in the face climate change.