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Objectives of the visit. • Where possible, meet representatives of potential partner NGOs and collectives, and, prioritizing gender equality, select the most suitable. • Establish a working relationship with scientific project partners, and chosen NGOs, collectives and organizations. • Establish a collaborative network between existing and new partners, including agreed systems for collaboration in pandemic conditions. • Explore opportunities for fair trade development, and for knowledge exchange between indigenous populations and the UK sustainable development partner. • Explore ways to make project scientific data accessible and understandable by indigenous populations. • Where possible, with new partner NGOs / collectives, make field trips to provide visiting partners with direct experience of quinoa cultivation. • Build an understanding between all partners of skills needed to deliver the main project, including use of logframes. • Listen to partners, and revise draft of main project application taking into account their comments and other new perspectives gained during visit. • Hold workshops and meetings, including one to review the revised draft including budgets, and to agree activities and outputs necessary to deliver main project planned outcomes and impacts. Work carried out by Lead Partner (Mexico) prior to applying for this project. • Collaboration over more than five years with Prof. Mena Portales (Cuban partner) on desert fungi and their sustainable use as bioremediating agents. • Collaboration for over one year with Prof. Guzmán (host scientist for Bolivia) and Prof. Yarzábal (host scientist for Ecuador) in studies and implementation of extremophilic microbes as biofertilizers to increase crop production in extreme climates, including publications documenting that work. • Video conferences with host scientists for Bolivia and Ecuador, PROINPA, and Cuban partner, developing draft plans for Partnership Project, including scientific goals and methodology. Work carried out by Lead Partner (UK) prior to applying for this project. • Maintainance of Cybertruffle [this website provides key information about fungi and their associated organisms; its origins lie in six earlier Darwin Initiative projects going back to 1993, led and successfully completed by the UK Lead Partner; over 200,000 further records of fungi will soon be added]. • Identification of and contact with suitable UK sustainable development partner, including detailed discussions of sustainable development goals and means of achieving them. Activities to be carried out under the Partnership Project. • Identify a suitable mycologist as scientific partner for Perú. • Identify sustainable development NGOs and/or quinoa-growing collectives as potential project partners for Andes. • Identify organizations in Ecuador and Perú as suitable partners along with PROINPA (Bolivia) for developing biofertilizers and other beneficial products anticipated to arise from main project. • Explore possibilities for in situ fungal conservation through regenerative farming practices. • Prepare a first draft of the main project application. • Mexican and UK project leaders and (matched funding permitting) other non-Bolivian partners, visit Bolivia for objectives listed above. • After visit, gather necessary ancillary documentation, then finalize and submit robust main project application. Evidence of the proposed partners’ intentions to collaborate: see accompanying letters of support PDF file.