Andrés Nicolás Contreras Méndez (d. November 30, 2014) was a Chilean agronomist known for his studies of the native potatoes of Chiloé. Contreras pioneered preservation efforts of the many varieties of Chiloé potatoes as he began in the 1960s to travel

Chiloé Archipelago The Chiloé Archipelago ( es, Archipiélago de Chiloé, , ) is a group of islands lying off the coast of Chile, in the Los Lagos Region. It is separated from mainland Chile by the Chacao Channel in the north, the Sea of Chiloé in the east an ...

in search of small gardens where local elderly women had grown potatoes over many generations. In 1990 he led a potato-hunting expedition to

Guaitecas Archipelago Guaitecas Archipelago is a sparsely populated archipelago in the Aisén region of Chile. The archipelago is made up of eight main islands and numerous smaller ones. The eight largest islands are from northwest to southeast: Gran Guaiteca, Ascen ...

; the southern limit of

Pre-Hispanic In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, t ...

agriculture. San Juan de la Costa was another location where he collected potatoes. Contreras improved local varieties intended to be used in

small scale agriculture A smallholding or smallholder is a small farm operating under a small-scale agriculture model. Definitions vary widely for what constitutes a smallholder or small-scale farm, including factors such as size, food production technique or technology ...

in Chiloé and San Juan de la Costa. Contreras established the

gene bank Gene banks are a type of biorepository that preserves genetic material. For plants, this is done by in vitro storage, freezing cuttings from the plant, or stocking the seeds (e.g. in a seedbank). For animals, this is done by the freezing of ...

of Chilean potatoes at the

Austral University of Chile Austral University of Chile ( es, Universidad Austral de Chile or UACh) is a Chilean research university based primarily in Valdivia, with a satellite campus in Puerto Montt. Founded on September 7, 1954, it is one of the eight original Chilean Tr ...

Valdivia Valdivia (; Mapuche: Ainil) is a city and commune in southern Chile, administered by the Municipality of Valdivia. The city is named after its founder Pedro de Valdivia and is located at the confluence of the Calle-Calle, Valdivia, and Cau-Cau ...

. Contreras died on November 30, 2014, being 71 years old.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Contreras, Andres Academic staff of the Austral University of Chile Austral University of Chile alumni Chilean agronomists Plant geneticists 2014 deaths Chilean geneticists