Short answers, pulled from the story.
The potato Solanum tuberosum is a herbaceous perennial plant that grows up to three feet tall with hairy stems and leaves arranged in roughly four pairs of leaflets. These tubers form from thickened rhizomes at the tips of long thin stolons creating a storage vessel for nutrients that has sustained human civilization for millennia.
The potato originated around 7,000 to 10,000 years ago in the region of present-day southern Peru and extreme northwestern Bolivia near Lake Titicaca. The Spanish introduced the potato to Europe in the second half of the 16th century following the conquest of the Inca Empire marking the beginning of the Columbian exchange.
The Great Irish Famine occurred in 1845 when a plant disease known as late blight caused by the fungus-like oomycete Phytophthora infestans spread rapidly through western Ireland and parts of the Scottish Highlands. The lack of genetic diversity due to the very limited number of varieties initially introduced to Europe left the crop vulnerable to this devastating pathogen.
There are approximately 5,000 potato varieties worldwide with 3,000 of them found in the Andes alone primarily in Peru Bolivia Ecuador Chile and Colombia. Varieties differ in starch content ranging from floury baking potatoes with 20 to 22 percent starch to waxy boiling potatoes with 16 to 18 percent starch based on the ratio of amylose and amylopectin.
The potato genome which contains 12 chromosomes and 860 million base pairs was first sequenced in 2009 providing a medium-sized plant genome that has opened new avenues for understanding the crop's biology and potential. Modern potato breeding has entered a new era with the application of genetic engineering and CRISPR-Cas9 technology to introduce self-compatibility and resistance to pests.
The United Nations International Day of Potato is celebrated on the 30th of May each year starting in 2024 to recognize the importance of the crop to humanity. A boiled potato with skin supplies 87 calories and is 77 percent water providing moderate sources of vitamin C vitamin B6 and potassium.