The Obonuco Research Center is located on the road from Pasto to Obonuco, Municipality of Pasto. The Ministry of National Economy—now the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development—established the Center in 1946 in order to advance research in cattle and for genetic improvement of cold climate crops.

In 1955, the Center was part of the Agricultural Research Division; in 1963, it became part of the Colombian Agricultural Institute (Instituto Colombiano Agropecuario, ICA) which in 1993 became the Colombian Agricultural Research Corporation (AGROSAVIA, previously called Corpoica).

Today, the Center's projects focus on improving the agricultural sector in the upper Andean zone of Nariño, upper Putumayo and the Patía subregion (which includes municipalities in northern Nariño and southern Cauca). Currently, the research agenda focuses on a diversity of production systems: potato, edible canna, vegetables, legumes, sugarcane for panela, dairy cattle and minor species, and Andean and forest fruit trees. It also has a germplasm bank whose purpose is to maintain the genetic variability of the native sheep stock and Colombian Blackberry breeds. In November 2015, ICA certified the bank’s good livestock breeding practices (GLBP) for sheep and goat species.

The Center has 532 hectares of land, of which approximately 140 are used for the development of research and outreach initiatives, as well as administrative activities; 306 belong to the Galeras Flora and Fauna Sanctuary; and the rest are mixed forest and plantations. In addition, the Center has infrastructure to support research, technological development and innovation (laboratories for milk quality analysis, entomology, soils and plant tissues; greenhouses; screen houses; and a milking parlor).

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Director

• Margaret Pasquini

• (+57) 60 1 9144677, Ext. 2902
• mpasquini@agrosavia.co
• View profile

Ecologist from York University and Ph.D. in Geography from Durham University, both in the UK, where she developed her thesis on soil fertility management in irrigated peri-urban agriculture in Nigeria. Margaret worked as researcher at the University of Bangor, Wales, where she was responsible for the management and coordination of research projects and networks funded by the European Union's Sixth Framework Programmme and the Darwin Initiative of the United Kingdom's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). She taught at Durham University, and between 2009 and 2013, at the Center for Interdisciplinary Development Studies at the University of Los Andes in Bogotá. Margaret has also done consulting work with the Resource Centre on Sustainable Urban Agriculture and Food Systems (RUAF Foundation). Her research interests have focused on urban, peri-urban and ethnobotanical agriculture, the rescue of ancestral or underutilized plants and crops, and local knowledge systems of small producers.

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