Potato

• 1. Introduction

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  The potato is a starchy tuber that pre-Columbian farmers domesticated around Lake Titicaca between roughly 7,000 and 10,000 years ago. They worked from a wild species in the S. brevicaule complex, in what is now southern Peru and northwestern Bolivia. The plant they tamed belongs to Solanum tuberosum, a perennial in the nightshade family. Today it feeds people across the world as a staple food. But the journey from a high-altitude Andean valley to a global field crop hides strange contradictions. How did a plant whose leaves carry a toxin become one of humanity's most trusted foods? Why does more than 99% of the modern crop trace not to those Andean highlands but to the lowlands of south-central Chile? And how did a vegetable named after a different plant entirely come to anchor dishes from Lithuania to northern China, and even appear in fiction grown on Mars?

• 2. A Plant Of Eyes And Toxins

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  Potato plants are herbaceous perennials that grow up to 1 meter high, with hairy stems and leaves carrying roughly four pairs of leaflets. Their flowers run from white or pink to blue or purple, yellow at the center, and are pollinated by insects. After flowering, the plant produces small green fruits resembling green cherry tomatoes, each holding about 300 very small seeds. The part people eat is not a root. Tubers are stems that form from thickened rhizomes at the tips of long thin stolons. On their surface sit the "eyes," arranged in a helical pattern, which protect the vegetative buds where new stems originate. Small circular holes called lenticels let the tuber breathe, their number varying with tuber size and conditions. The aerial parts of the plant contain the toxin solanine, one of several glycoalkaloids that protect it from predators. Tubers grown and stored properly hold these compounds in negligible amounts. Expose sprouts and skins to light, though, and the tubers can turn toxic and green. The 'Lenape' variety, released in 1967, was withdrawn in 1970 because it carried high glycoalkaloid levels, prompting breeders to keep new varieties below 200 mg/kg.

• 3. From The Andes To Ireland

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  The earliest archaeologically verified potato tuber remains turned up at the coastal site of Ancon in central Peru, dating to 2500 BC. The most widely cultivated variety, Solanum tuberosum tuberosum, is native to the Chiloe Archipelago and was grown by local indigenous people before the Spanish conquest. Following the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, the Spanish carried the potato to Europe in the second half of the 16th century as part of the Columbian exchange. European mariners then conveyed it to ports throughout the world, especially their colonies. Farmers were slow to take it up, but after 1750 it became an important food staple and field crop. By conservative estimates, the potato was responsible for a quarter of the growth in Old World population and urbanization between 1700 and 1900. That dependence carried a hidden danger. The very limited number of varieties first introduced left the crop with little genetic diversity. In 1845, late blight, caused by the oomycete Phytophthora infestans, spread through poorer communities of western Ireland and parts of the Scottish Highlands. The crop failures that followed led to the Great Irish Famine.

• 4. The Hunt For Hidden Lineages

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  DNA analysis upended a long-held belief about where modern potatoes came from. More than 99% of all current varieties descend not from the southern Peruvian highlands but from a subspecies that once grew in the lowlands of south-central Chile. A 2025 study by Zhang and colleagues grouped all potato species under S. tuberosum. It found the Petota lineage contains more than 55 diploid species, with only one selected by humans for domestication, all landraces branching from a single point within Solanum candolleanum. The major species grown worldwide, S. tuberosum, is a tetraploid with 48 chromosomes. Alongside it sit four diploid species with 24 chromosomes, two triploid species with 36, and one pentaploid species, S. curtilobum, with 60. The International Potato Center in Lima, Peru, holds 4,870 types of potato germplasm, most of them traditional landrace cultivars. In 2009, a draft sequence of the potato genome was made, with 12 chromosomes and 860 million base pairs, a medium-sized plant genome. Wild relatives carry treasures for breeders. The hexaploid S. demissum from Mexico has been used as a source of resistance to late blight, and Solanum bulbocastanum has been used to genetically engineer the potato to resist potato blight.

• 5. Engineering A Better Tuber

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  Potatoes, both S. tuberosum and most wild relatives, are self-incompatible, bearing no useful fruit when self-pollinated. That trait frustrates breeding, since all sexually produced plants must be hybrids. Researchers now know the gene responsible and how to disable it, introducing self-compatibility into diploid potatoes using CRISPR-Cas9. The 'Sli' gene, which makes pollen compatible with its own parent, was cloned by Wageningen University and Solynta in 2021, opening the door to faster breeding. Genetic modification has produced several named varieties. 'New Leaf', owned by Monsanto Company, carries genes from Bacillus thuringiensis that confer resistance to the Colorado potato beetle. Major food companies announced they would not use genetically modified potatoes, and Monsanto stated its intent to discontinue the line in March 2001. BASF developed 'Amflora', modified so its starch is almost entirely amylopectin, more useful to the starch industry. In 2010, the European Commission cleared 'Amflora' for cultivation in the European Union for industrial purposes only, not for food. In November 2014, the United States Department of Agriculture approved a genetically modified potato developed by Simplot that resists bruising and produces less acrylamide when fried.

• 6. How A Crop Is Made

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  Potatoes are generally grown from "seed potatoes," tubers raised specifically to be free from disease. In the United States, this restricts seed potato production to only 15 of the 50 states where potatoes are grown, favoring cold hard winters that kill pests and long sunshine hours. In the UK, most seed potatoes originate in Scotland, where westerly winds reduce aphid attacks. Growth divides into five phases, from sprout emergence and root growth through to tuber bulking and final maturation, when leaves and stems senesce and skins harden. Because exposure to light greens the skins and develops solanine, growers cover surface tubers by piling soil around the base, a practice called "hilling" up or "earthing" up. The Colorado potato beetle is considered the most important insect defoliator, capable of devastating entire crops. The potato cyst nematode, a microscopic worm whose eggs survive in soil for years, feeds on roots and makes crop rotation advisable. After harvest, potatoes are usually cured at 50 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit with high humidity, allowing the skin to set and wounds to heal. Stored well in commercial warehouses, potatoes can keep for up to 10 to 12 months.

• 7. Feeding The World

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  In 2023, world production of potatoes reached 383 million tonnes, led by China with 25% of the total and India as a major secondary producer. In 2010, the world devoted 18.6 million hectares to potato cultivation, with an average yield of 17.4 tonnes per hectare. New Zealand farmers have shown some of the best commercial yields in the world, ranging between 60 and 80 tonnes per hectare, with some reporting 88. The food energy yield of potatoes, about 9.2 million kcal per acre, outpaces maize at 7.5, rice at 7.4, wheat at 3, and soybeans at 2.8. In a 100 gram reference amount, a boiled potato with skin supplies 87 calories and is 77% water, 20% carbohydrates, and 2% protein, with negligible fat. It is a moderate source of vitamin C, vitamin B6, pantothenic acid, and potassium. Potatoes are rarely eaten raw because raw starch is poorly digested. Climate change threatens this abundance. One 2003 estimate suggested worldwide yield in the period 2040 to 2069 could fall 18 to 32% below the level at the time, driven by losses in hotter regions like Sub-Saharan Africa, unless farmers and cultivars adapt.

• 8. Potatoes In Myth And Art

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  In Inca mythology, Axomamma, a daughter of the earth mother Pachamama, is the goddess of potatoes, ensuring the fertility of the soil and the growth of the tubers. According to Iroquois mythology, the first potatoes grew from Earth Woman's feet after she died giving birth to her twin sons, Sapling and Flint. The Moche culture of northern Peru shaped sacred ceramics representing the potato both anthropomorphically and naturally. During the late 19th century, images of potato harvesting filled European art, including works by Willem Witsen and Anton Mauve. Van Gogh's 1885 painting The Potato Eaters shows a family eating potatoes; he deliberately chose coarse and ugly models, wanting to depict peasants as they really were. Jean-Francois Millet's The Potato Harvest depicts peasants in the plains between Barbizon and Chailly, painted with paste-like pigments thickly applied over coarse canvas. The tuber even entered modern play and fiction. Mr. Potato Head, invented in 1949 and sold commercially by Hasbro in 1952, was the first toy ever advertised on television. In the 2015 film The Martian, the stranded botanist Mark Watney cultivates potatoes on Mars using Martian soil fertilized with frozen feces. The United Nations marks the importance of the crop with the International Day of Potato, celebrated on the 30th of May each year, starting in 2024.