In the Andes there was genuine concern for the preservation of provisions for which various technologies were valuable. The environment in the middle of which the Andean cultures developed, created a need and a permanent anxiety to possess and store foods. If the means of preservation failed or the number of foods was much reduced, the spectra of hunger appeared and produced the collapse of reciprocity. In other words, the consequence of a shortage could bring disintegration of the State of a macroethnicity.

Due to this urgency, Andean man invented several necessary methods for the conservation of provisions, drying or dehydrating the products.

Meats were dried in the sun and with them charqui was prepared, whether of llama or venison. They also dehydrated the flesh of birds like partridges and doves, also of frogs. Shrimp were dehydrated by means of hot stones or sand. This product is known by the name of anuka and it was wrapped in baskets or small trunks called chipa made out of totora.

Dried and salted fish was an important food source for people from the coast and especially for highlanders and was barter material between the two of them. Other products from the sea were various mollusks which could be dried, like machas, or which could be used to prepare an incorruptible jalea or could be used in making stews or soups.

Profesor Masuda investigated the use of cochayuyo or "aquatic plants" in the feeding of modern Peru and also ancient Peru in which he includes sweet water algae but mostly those from sea water. Distinct varieties of algae are used in meals and the most common was Porphyra o columbiana.

At present, cochayuyo is eaten fresh with ceviche, spicy foods and soups and also dried loose or in plants in urban centers in the highlands.

Tubers are preserved in different forms. Ocas (Oxalis tuberculosa) and machua (Tropaeolum tuberosa) they are dried in the sun and set out in the sun to make them sweeter and are then called cahui. However, the tuber that can keep for indefinite periods is the potato (Solanum tuberosa) which is submitted to a complicated process of dehydration. The bitter varieties are preferred and the task is carried out at four thousand meters above sea level.

The different kinds of chuño vary according to the qualities of the potatoes used, the most outstanding is muraya (the process generally takes several weeks). The potatoes are submerged in running water and then dried in the sun and exposed to the nocturnal frosts. The potatoes of sweet varieties are arranged by size on a flat surface exposed to the weather for four or five nights in the nocturnal cold and the burning sun of midday. Afterwards they are stepped on by the women so the peels fall off and the moisture is squeezed out. This is repeated until they finish drying.

There are a large number of edible plants whose use was restricted or which were used only in their ecological niches.