Gabriela Pérez
The content of this news item has been machine translated and may contain some inaccuracies with respect to the original content published in Spanish.
Our country is characterised by a wide variety of flora throughout its territory, and the orchid is one of the most popular species, with more than 2,500 varieties.
A group of researchers affiliated to the Instituto de Ciencias Ómicas y Biotecnología Aplicada (Icoba PUCP), led by Dr. Carlos Martel, discovered a new species of orchid in the surroundings of the Sho'llet forest, located in the province of Oxapampa (Pasco). It was named Maxillaria Bicentenaria, due to the colour of its red and white petals, similar to the Peruvian flag.
This orchid was named Maxillaria Bicentenaria, due to the colour of its red and white petals, similar to the Peruvian flag.
The discovery of this orchid was made while the team was carrying out fieldwork for another project which, although it seeks to understand, characterise and describe the different floral aromas in the orchids of Peru and their relationship with the different pollination processes to which they are subject, its particular aim was not to discover new varieties.
"When we collect the scents, we have to know which orchid we are extracting from and what its taxonomic identity is. So that's where we discovered that this species, which we initially thought was another one, turned out to be new and we named it 'bicentennial', because of the red and white colour of its petals and sepals," says Dr Carlos Martel, a researcher at Icoba PUCP.
Lecturer in the Department of Science and Researcher at Icoba PUCP
The project on which the Icoba PUCP researchers are working is called "Floral aromas and pollinating insects in Peruvian orchids: a chemical-ecological approach in view of the bicentenary". Currently, they have analysed nearly one hundred orchid species from the regions of Pasco, Jaén and Cusco.
"The research is based on collecting as many scents as possible from different orchid species throughout the country, identifying their scents and, from this, learning about evolutionary and reproductive aspects of the group. We hope that, in the end, it will provide useful scientific knowledge related to orchid conservation," Dr Martel explains.
This initiative, which began in January this year, has received funding of S/ 200,000 from Prociencia, a Concytec fund, and has the support of leading professionals such as Dr. Alfredo Ibáñez, Dr. Fanny Casado and Dr. Madina Manzurova.
