Cuba obtains the botanical seed of the taro Xanthosoma spp

The Research Institute of Tropical Plants of Villa Clara (Instituto de Investigaciones de Viandas Tropicales (INIVIT) not only placed Cuba in top places on this type of research but also solved the historical challenge that was blocking the possibility of hybridization in this genre.

MINAG | internet@granma.cu

For the first time Cuba obtains the seed of taro Xanthosoma spp. a challenge that made historically impossible to produce hybrids of this plant and that is now finally overcome.  According to declarations made by the Ministry of Agriculture Agronomist Engineer, Alay Jiménez, author of the named research, the achievement has a transcendental meaning for many reasons, it is now possible to improve taro Xanthosoma spp. We are solving the fundamental problem of taro’s erratic flowering which has been the main obstacle in applying classic hybridization methods to this plant.

"A polygenic plant, the taro Xanthosoma spp., is able to generate genetic variability through gene recombination from differing parental plants. This option is radically superior to the most common option of clonal selection able to exploit mainly preexisting variation and which is subject to reverting.”

This achievement, he pointed, puts Cuba at the forefront of this type of research. “There are few countries who have a program as strong as the one INIVIT has, which already counts with the progeny of two families: one with 140 hybrids and the other one with 35.”

The achievement was made public to the scientific community on June 2, 2025 through an article published in the high impact international research magazine “Agronomy.”  The article is titled “Novel Insights into Botanical Seed Production of Xanthosoma spp. in Cuba”.

“Until 2023 genetic improvement of taro Xanthosoma spp. was possible only using the method of improvement through selection, which includes identifying among a population of individuals the plants with superior phenotypic characteristics

“If the selection made was not a plant resulting from genetic mutation, there was a possibility that as time passed the genotypes selected would not continue to express that particular superiority themselves. On the other hand the classic methods of hybridization have been used for more than half a century but it was never successful mainly because of erratic flowering in this species and in our conditions” the researcher explained.

The initial impact and the following ratification experiments were conducted all within the Genetic Improvement Program of INIVIT. “It was proven in its experimental fields and with the creation of the first germplasm bank of taro Xanthosoma hybrids», he added.

Agronomist Engineer Alay Jiménez recognized the value and support of consulting researcher Alfredo Morales Rodríguez. The goal achieved was always the focus of an already disappeared researcher and for many years Director of INIVIT Sergio Rodríguez Morales. “He transferred to me the responsibility of continuing the research of  Xanthosoma spp., and he also deposited in me his confidence in the capacities I developed since the beginning of my work in this institute.”  

Translation by NSCUBA (Nova Scotia)

 Cuba-Venezuela: One Heart in two Trenches

A book with the signatures of more than 4.300.000 Cubans, headed by the signature of the leader of the Revolution Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, was provided to Venezuela.

Demetrio Villaurrutia | internet@granma.cu

October 17, 2025

More than 50 000 people attended this Friday at dawn the act in solidarity with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the act took place in Havana right in front of the monument to El Libertador Simón Bolívar, and against the increasing pressures and threats made by the government of the United States against that nation.

 

Headed by the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and the president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, the act included a delegation of Venezuela headed by Pedro Infante, vice-president of organizations of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela) and the first vice-president of the National Assembly of Venezuela. Also present were the Prime Minister,  Manuel Marrero Cruz, and the secretary of Organization of the Central Committee of the Party, Roberto Morales Ojeda, both members of the Political Bureau, together with party leaders, government and mass organizations and the Cuban Instituto of Friendship with the Peoples (Instituto Cubano de Amistad con los Pueblos).

 

The president gave Infante a picture and a book of signatures headed by the leader of the Cuban Revolution and General of Cuban Army, Raúl Castro Ruz, the result of the backing in centers of workers, students and the community, prompted by the declaration of the Revolutionary Cuban government: «It is urgent to prevent a military aggression against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (la República Bolivariana de Venezuela)».

 

Among his central words Morales Ojeda affirmed that more than 4 300 000 signatures, a symbol of Latin American and Caribbean unity, were collected. He stated, «may you receive these signatures as the greatest and most eloquent token of love that can be offered to a sister nation».

 

He also confirmed the invariable support of the Party and Government of Cuba to president Nicolás Maduro. «We are one trench, only one heart and two peoples».

Pedro Infante defined the Cuban people as heroic, noble and supportive and shared with the present the gratitude of President Maduro and millions of Venezuelans. «I thank the Cuban people for their solidarity and firmness», he said, affirming that both Cuba and Venezuela are nations of peace, victims of the terrorism of the imperialism of the United States. He added also that «Cuba is a moral symbol of dignity and struggle against imperialism, proving that yes, it is possible to win and live with dignity».

Translation NSCUBA (Nova Scotia)

 Pigeon’s Nest

A lifetime flying over or perched in the countryside…like a true Heroine.

Pastor Batista Valdés | internet@granma.cu

October, 2025

Farmer from soul and heart has never been able to separate from the land in which she has cultivated each and everyone of her dreams.

 Friendly reader, do you have an idea about the many Cubans who could occupy a modest, but much deserved space in this newspaper, today October 15 the day the world has dedicated to rural women?

You are not wrong if you answer or imagine thousands and thousands.

There can be many stories (of love to the land, of hard work demanded, of family, of plants, of animals and streams…) as much as human sensibility and sight would allow us to appreciate.

The limited space forces us to be -I do not know if justly or unjustly- very selective, I decide in favor of the imaginary alternative of moving closer to the area of Guayos, a village located about 11 kilometers from Sancti Spiritus, where a woman lives that difficulty there is any natural of this province who do not know.

Juana María Blanco Santo told me that morning, when, without prior notice, we arrived at a farm which could not have but the most apt name The Victory (La Victoria) nor a manager more loved than Juana herself.

I remember that without stopping picking up her wild rice from the top of her table, she continued talking naturally, as many farmers do, her doors wide open to us, her visitors.  

The sight she let go had nothing to do with the male seeds, the small seeds or any other grains that her hands of queen were separating with the virtuosity of a pianist on the keyboard. She was no longer sitting on the bench but walking over the steps of her father since she was a child: the man she has to thank for her never ending love of earth.

 «Difficult times, she said: at age eleven I did not know what a school desk was».

The reasons are well known by those born prior to 1959, or they would have read about them. No need to talk about her adult labor, which occupied her years of childhood and adolescence, or where Juana was forced to set roots like an oak with three children to feed with her honest sweat. Nor when a well to do family paid with a fistful of flowers for her hard work, her hands red from washing mountains of dirty clothes.

Like a Rabiche pigeon

Juan always had lots of intelligence, hard work, capacity, tenderness, energy and heart, to later remove herself from her roots in the land and perched herself, like an orchid or a butterfly, wherever she wanted in the city. A bird, however, can also be limited, enclosed. This is maybe the reason why the sugar industry surprised her with a new home made specially for her. She did not know whether to cry from happiness or jump like the girl she never stopped being.

«My life on the farm. With these hands I have not only cooked, washed, ironed, sew and embroidered…I have also do everything a rural woman does: plant sugarcane, vegetables, fruits, clean the land with a machete, prepare paddocks, work with oxen, raise birds,  pigs, goats, rams and cows…Well, everything less one thing: lock little birds in cages. »

Maybe because of that (and I speak not just of labors in terms of the material side of them but in terms of the sentiments they arouse) in one of these conversations that humans do not forget even when memory is going, Juana remembers that Fidel told her that in her last stage of life she did not want to abandon the land she could ask for a chair and remain there all day sitting under the trees.

Fidel seemed to have known that, even though he was talking with an extraordinarily simple woman, he had in front of him at the same time a Heroine of Work of the Cuban Republic... The same one who while receiving from his hands this high recognition, said, with farmer naturality: «No Comandante, the true hero here is you, for all that you have done and continue doing for us Cubans».

Translation NSCUBA (Nova Scotia)