Potato

Potato, (Solanum tuberosum), annual plant in the nightshade family (Solanaceae), grown for its starchy edible tubers. The potato is native to the Peruvian-Bolivian Andes and is now cultivated on every inhabited continent and is one of the world’s main food crops, valued for its high yields and adaptability to diverse climates. Potatoes are consumed in a variety of forms, including as cooked vegetables, as processed foods such as french fries and potato chips, and as ingredients such as potato starch and potato flour, which are used in cooking, baking, and food manufacturing. They are also used to make vodka and aquavit. The tubers are highly digestible and supply vitamin C, potassium, thiamin, and niacin; when eaten with their skins, they also provide dietary fiber.

Domestication and history

Potatoes are thought to have been independently domesticated several times by Indigenous peoples of the central Andes over 7,000 years ago. With hundreds of varieties adapted to different elevations, climates, and soils, the crop became a dietary staple of Andean civilizations, including the Inca, and was grown using sophisticated agricultural techniques such as terracing and irrigation. Potatoes were eaten fresh, roasted, boiled, or baked, and surplus harvests were often preserved as chuño, a freeze-dried product made by exposing tubers to the region’s cold nighttime temperatures and intense daytime sunlight. Lightweight and capable of being stored for years, chuño was an important source of food during times of scarcity and for long-distance travel and military campaigns.

Encountered by the invading Spaniards, potatoes were introduced into Europe during the second half of the 16th century. The potato became one of the most significant crops brought from the New World during the Columbian Exchange, and its widespread cultivation in Europe helped diversify diets and supported agricultural and population growth. By the end of the 17th century the plant was a major crop in Ireland, and by the end of the 18th century it was a major crop in continental Europe, particularly Germany, and in the west of England. It continued to spread, in both Western and Eastern hemispheres, during the first four decades of the 19th century, and the Irish economy itself became dependent upon the potato. However, the disastrous failures of the Irish crops in the mid-19th century (especially in 1846 and 1848), because of late blight (Phytophthora infestans), and the resulting Irish Potato Famine generated a more-cautious attitude toward dependence on the plant.

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Physical description

The potato is one of some 150 tuber-bearing species of the genus Solanum (a tuber is the swollen end of an underground stem). The compound leaves are spirally arranged; each leaf is 20–30 cm (about 8–12 inches) long and consists of a terminal leaflet and two to four pairs of leaflets. The white, lavender, or purple flowers have five fused petals and yellow stamens. The fruit is a small poisonous berry with numerous seeds.

The stems extend underground into structures called stolons. The ends of the stolons may enlarge greatly to form a few to more than 20 tubers, of variable shape and size, usually ranging in weight up to 300 grams (10 ounces) but occasionally to more than 1.5 kg (3.3 pounds). The skin varies in color from brownish white to deep purple; the starchy flesh normally ranges in color from white to yellow, but it too may be purple.

The tubers bear spirally arranged buds (eyes) in the axils of aborted leaves, of which scars remain. The buds sprout to form clones of the parent plant, allowing growers to vegetatively propagate desired characteristics. Indeed, vegetative reproduction is always used commercially, though the resulting decrease in genetic diversity has made the popular varieties more vulnerable to pests and diseases. Potatoes are susceptible to a number of diseases and pests, including late blight, viruses, nematodes, and the Colorado potato beetle, making resistant cultivars and integrated pest management important to commercial production.

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