The national government created this agricultural research center in 1970 with the aim of generating and sharing technology in the departments of Cesar, La Guajira and Magdalena. The Center is named after the Motilon Indians, the first inhabitants of this region.

Research at the Center is carried out on agroforestry systems, nutrition and feeding, pastures and forages, forage seed production, entomology, plant breeding, and management of agricultural crops such as cotton, cassava, sweet potato, melon, biofortified beans and several vegetables. The Center has a laboratory for basic animal health, fodder processing, seed quality and milk quality; an entomology laboratory; nurseries for planting forest and fodder crops; a weather station for recording climate factors; and two deep wells for irrigation.

Among the main achievements of the work done at the Motilonia Research Center are the release of certified varieties of cotton Corpoica M-123, Caribeña M-129 and Vallenata M-135; the production of seeds of sorghum ICA-Motilonia and maize ICA V-155; the development of biofortified crops of beans and cassava resistant to drought; the production of grass and legume seeds; and the development of sustainable silvopastoral systems.

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Director

• Mario Augusto Zapata Tamayo

• (+57) 60 1 9144677, Ext. 2300
• mazapata@agrosavia.co
• View profile

Bacteriologist, specialist in Epidemiology, M.Sc. in Basic Sciences and Ph.D. candidate in Agroecology at the University of Antioquia, Colombia.

Staff contact information