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The potato (Solanum tuberosum) is a perennial plant of the Solanaceae, or nightshade, family, commonly grown for its starchy tuber. Potatoes are the world's most widely grown tuber crop, and the fourth largest crop in terms of fresh produce (after rice, wheat, and maize), but this ranking is inflated due to the high water content of fresh potatoes relative to that of other crops. The potato originated in the Andes, likely somewhere in present-day Peru or Bolivia. Potatoes form an important part of Andean culture, and the farmers grow many different varieties possessing a remarkable diversity of colors and shapes. Potatoes spread to the rest of the world after European contact with the Americas in the late 1400s and early 1500s.

Botanical description

Potato plants have a low-growing habit and bear white to purple flowers with yellow stamens.

Buds called "eyes" appear on the surface of potato tubers. Since common varieties of potatoes do not produce seeds (they bear sterile flowers), propagation occurs by planting pieces of existing tubers, cut to include at least one eye. Confusingly, these pieces can bear the name "seed potatoes". The haulm or shaw of the potato plant may wither if early harvesting does not occur.

After potato plants flower, some varieties will produce small green fruit that look similar to green cherry-tomatoes. These produce seeds like other fruits. Insects can cross-pollinate the flowers of different potato plants. Each of the fruits can contain up to 300 true seeds. One can separate the seeds from the fruits by putting them in a blender on a slow speed with some water, then leaving them in water for a day so that the seeds will sink and the rest of the fruit will float. Potato fruit contains poisonous substances: one should not eat them. However, some horticulturists sell chimeras made by grafting a tomato plant onto a potato plant, which can produce both edible tomatoes and potatoes. These chimera plants are more commonly known as "the Miraculous Tuber-Plant".

Distribution

Potatoes grow best in cool climates with good rainfall or irrigation such as in western Europe. But they are also widely grown in the subtropical lowlands of the Indo-Gangetic plains of India (as a winter crop) and in the highlands of southwest China (for example, Sichuan and Yunnan province) and in equatorial highlands of Java.

"Potato" etymology

The Quechua word for potato is papa. In the 16th century, the potato was introduced to Spain (the first record is from Sevilla, around the year 1570) and from there to the rest of Europe, North America, Africa and Asia. The name "potato" comes from the Spanish word batata, meaning sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas. The sweet potato had arrived much earlier; Christopher Columbus himself had brought it back from the Caribbean. The potato has only a very distant relationship with the sweet potato, but because the edible part of both crops is an underground organ (a root in the case of the sweet potato), they have often been confused.

In Spain, the potato is now called patata, although in some parts papa is also used. From Spain the potato went to Italy, where it was likened to truffles (mushrooms that grow underground), or tartufoli in Italian. The German and Russian words for potato (kartoffel and картофель) are derived from this Italian origin. Another common name is "earth-apple": pomme de terre in French, aardappel in Dutch, תפוח אדמה (tapuach adama) in Hebrew (often contracted as the single word תפוד, tapud), and Erdapfel in Austrian German. Pomme meant fruit or vegetable in XVI century French and pomme de terre (fruit of the earth) was possibly translated literally when the potato was adopted by further nations. The term "earth-apples" should not be confused with "earth-pears" (Helianthus tuberosum), which are also known as topinambour or the Jerusalem Artichoke. In Polish, potatoes are called ziemniaki, which comes from the word ziemia, meaning earth or soil.

Another common naming approach is to refer to its origin: 'foreign tuber' in China, 'Batavian tuber' in Japan, after Batavia (now Jakarta) on Java. In Czech they are called "brambory", after the German city of Brandenburg. In Brazil, batata is the term used, but its full name is actually batata inglesa (lit. "English potato"). In the United States people sometimes refer to the "Irish potato", a reference to the source of potato's introduction into the British North American colonies. The term Irish potato helps distinguish the crop from the sweet potato, but then the sweet potato is commonly called "yam" in the United States, whereas that is yet an entirely different crop.

A number of popular alternatives or shortened forms exist in English, such as taters, murphies, or tatties, the last usually associated with Scotland. Potatoes are commonly known as spuds in parts of the United States and other English-speaking areas. The exact origin of the term is unclear. It may refer to a "spudder," a shovel-like tool used to harvest potatoes, or to a wooden barrel sorters would put small potatoes into when sorting for larger ones. *.

In the Irish language the word used for potato is práta, plural prátaí (though this has become fata/fataí in Connacht Irish). In Ireland this word is sometimes used by non-Irish speakers as a nickname for potatoes.

History and spread

Origins

There are about 200 different wild potato species. They occur from the southwestern USA through the highlands of Mexico, Central America, the Andes to Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. Most species diversity is found in the Mexican transvolcanic belt (near Mexico City, and in the central-southern Andes (central Peru to Bolivia).

The ancestor of the modern cultivated potato was domesticated in the Andes. Recent genetic analysis has shown that the potato was cultivated from one progenitor in an area of southern Peru, and the cultivated species then spread from there. However, the plant may have been used in other parts of the world, and it appears that native Americans collected or even cultivated them in what is now New Mexico (USA). Archaeological evidence suggests that Andean people have cultivated the potato for at least 7,000 years. In pre-Columbian times it was widely grown in the Andes (at high elevations where it is too cold for maize) and in parts of Chile (Chiloe island in particular). A. Hayatt Verrill in his book Foods America Gave the World wrote:

"I do not believe that anyone knows how many varieties of potatoes there are in Peru, but to a person accustomed to out ordinary everyday "spuds" the display of potatoes in a Preuvian market is simply bewildering. There are tubers with white, yellow, pink, gray and lavender "meat"; with skins white, pink, red, yellow, brown, green, purple, orange, black and spotted and streaked with various hues; potatoes of every conceivable size and shape, some as smooth and shiny as a tomato, others as rough and warty as a toad."

Spain

The first European record of the potato came in 1537 from the Spanish conquistador Castellanos, who discovered the tuber when his group raided a village in South America. After the potato was brought over to Spain, it gradually spread across Europe. Initially the food was treated with distrust, and was believed to be unhealthy and even un-Christian. This prevented widespread acceptance for a period, although it began to be promoted as a medicinal plant.

During periods of warfare, the potato proved beneficial. Grain crops could be burned down and grain stores confiscated by marching armies, but potatoes lay underground and were generally unaffected by military foraging. This led to increased use by the peasantry of areas in Germany, which had been particularly badly ravaged during the Thirty Years' War.

England

Popular legend has long credited Sir Walter Raleigh with first bringing the potato to England. History suggests Sir Francis Drake as a more likely candidate. In 1586, after battling the Spaniards in the Caribbean, Drake stopped at Cartagena in Colombia to collect provisions — including tobacco and potato tubers. Before returning to England he stopped at Roanoke Island, where the first English settlers had attempted to set up a colony. The pioneers returned to England with Drake, along with the potatoes. Agriculturalists in Europe soon found potatoes easier to grow and cultivate than other staple crops, such as wheat and oats; potatoes produce more food energy than any other European crop for the same area of land and require only a shovel for harvesting.

Ireland

The potato became such an important food for the Irish that the popular imagination automatically associates the two today, but its early history in Ireland remains obscure. One speculation has it that the potato may have originally arrived in Ireland washed ashore from wrecked galleons of the Spanish Armada (1589). Another story credits the introduction of the potato in Ireland to Sir Walter Raleigh, a financier of transatlantic expeditions, at least one of which made landfall at Smerwick, County Kerry in October, 1587, but no record survives of what botanical specimens it may have carried or whether they thrived in Ireland. Some stories say that Sir Walter first planted the potato on his estate near Cork. A 1699 source (over one century after the event) says 'The potato .... Was brought first out of Virginia by Sir Walter Raleigh, and he stopping at Ireland, some was planted there, where it thrived well and to good purpose, for in three succeeding wars, when all the corn above ground was destroyed, this supported them; for the soldiers, unless they had dug up all the ground where they grew, and almost sifted it, could not extirpate them.' *

Whatever the source, the potato became popular in Ireland both because of its high productivity and because of the advantages of both growth and storage hidden underground. English landlords also encouraged potato-growing by Irish tenants because they wanted to produce more wheat — if the Irish could survive on a crop that took less land, that would free a greater area for wheat production. By 1650 potatoes had become a staple food of Ireland, and they began to replace wheat as the major crop elsewhere in Europe, serving to feed both people and animals.

A single devastating event, however, looms large in the Irish history of potatoes — the Irish potato famine. In the 1840s a major outbreak of potato blight, a plant disease, swept through Europe, wiping out the potato crop in many countries. The Irish working class lived largely on the unpalatable but fertile 'lumper', and when the blight reached Ireland their main staple food disappeared.

Though Ireland grew a variety of crops at this time, most went as exports to Europe for sale at a higher price. In fact, during the Potato Famine, Ireland remained a net exporter of food stuffs, being that the exported foods remained too expensive for the Irish themselves to afford. Historians continue to debate the roles that English rule and European market prices played in causing the famine.

Ultimately the famine led to almost a million deaths, and the subsequent emigration of millions more Irish (see Irish diaspora). Emigration from the German states also grew, although central Europe did not suffer the mass starvation that occurred in Ireland.

Continental Europe

By the seventeenth century the potato had become firmly established as a staple of Europe's poor, leading richer people to spurn it, although this changed gradually, with Antoine-Augustin Parmentier's persuading King Louis XVI of France of the value of the crop which he was fed as a prisoner of Prussia during the Seven Years' War. The soup potage Parmentier and shepherd's pie hachis Parmentier takes their name from the great horticulturalist. By the end of the 18th century, the potato had become popular in France due to the advocacy of Parmentier.

Today, potatoes grow widely in Britain, Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, and other Northern or Eastern European nations, due to their ability to thrive in cold, damp climates. Potatoes figure in many national dishes of this region. Because the potato grew so well in Northern Europe, it may have contributed to the population-explosion there in the 19th century - though not in other centuries.

In Russia, potatoes met with initial suspicion: the people called them "the Devil's apples" because of folklore surrounding things which grow underground or which have associations with dirt.

United States

Although potatoes were called "potatoes of the Virginia" by early English botanists, they were in fact from South America, not Virginia. The first mention of potatoes in North America comes in an account of Scots-Irish settlers in Londonderry, New Hampshire during 1719. Potatoes were used for food and as animal feed. The first potatoes planted in Idaho were in 1836 but it was not until after the development by Luther Burbank of the Russet potato that potatoes became a major Idaho crop, at the beginning of the 20th century. While potatoes are grown commercially in at least 35 states, most potatoes are grown in the north. Idaho grows 30% of the total U.S. potato crop, Washington another 20%; Michigan, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Colorado, and Oregon round out the top producers.

Varieties

From a growing point of view potatoes are divided into first earlies, second earlies, and main crop. The former rapidly produce small tubers, the latter more slowly produce large ones.

Potatoes' skins come in the colors brown, yellow, pink, red, and purple (sometimes called "blue"). Their flesh may appear white or may reflect the color of the skin. The market calls small types "fingerlings" or "new" potatoes, larger potatoes may class as "earlies" or "main crop", with the "main crop" referring to varieties that will store well. Potato retailers may label different types as:

  • "boiling", indicating that they retain some shape when boiled
  • "baking", indicating that they only hold their shape if baked
  • "roasting", indicating good flavor when roasted
  • "salad" to indicate suitability for salad use (often firm and waxy-fleshed when boiled)
  • "mashing" to indicate that when mashed they form a smooth consistency, neither fibrous nor grainy

Common North American potato varieties include:

In the United States the term "Idaho potato" often refers to the Russet Burbank, the principal variety grown in Idaho, that country's principal potato-growing region. The term also occurs generically for other potatoes grown in Idaho.

Common British potato varieties include:

Many potato varieties in the U.K. originated on breeding stations which give part of the potato's name. Thus the Maris breeding station developed the above-mentioned Maris Piper and the Maris Peer. Another well-known station, Pentland, produced such varieties as Pentland Javelin and Dell.

Common French varieties include

  • Amandine — a variety of early potato, descended from the varieties Charlotte and Mariana. Bred in Brittany, France, it entered the national list of potato varieties in 1994. Amandine shaws typically produce long tubers with very pale, unblemished skin. Their flesh, firm and also very pale, contains comparatively little starch. Amandine potatoes have become popular in Switzerland.

Peru, as the native area of origin for potatoes, is home to a wide range of more than 4,200 varieties.

Other varieties include:

The sweet potato is not a true potato, it is a separate species and part of a different plant family: the Convolvulaceae.

Food value

Potatoes have a high carbohydrate content and include protein, minerals (particularly potassium), and vitamins, including vitamin C. Freshly harvested potatoes retain more vitamin C than stored potatoes.

New and fingerling potatoes offer the advantage that they contain fewer toxic chemicals. Such potatoes offer an excellent source of nutrition. Peeled, long-stored potatoes have less nutritional value, especially when fried, although they still have potassium and vitamin C.

Potatoes also provide starch, flour, alcohol (see Poitin), dextrin, and livestock fodder.

Potatoes (particularly mashed potatoes) are known to have a high Glycemic index, a disqualifying factor in many diets.

Cooking

General Methods

Cooks and chefs can prepare potatoes for eating in numerous ways: either with their skin on or peeled, whole or cut into pieces, and with seasonings or without. The only requirement involves cooking — to break down the starch and make them edible. Most end-consumers eat potatoes hot, but several basic potato recipes involve cooking the potatoes and then eating them cold — potato salad and potato chips (or "potato crisps"). One of the most common presentation methods involves mashing potatoes: peeling, boiling, then mashing and mixing with butter, cream, or other seasonings before serving.

Other presentations or dishes may see potatoes baked whole; boiled; steamed; cut into cubes and roasted; scalloped diced or sliced and fried (home fries); grated into small thin strips and fried (hash browns); grated and formed into dumplings, Rösti or potato pancakes; and cut into long, thin pieces and fried or baked (French fries, called "chips" in the UK). Potatoes, unlike many foods, can also be easily cooked in a microwave oven and still retain nearly all of their nutritional value, provided that they are covered in ventilated plastic wrap to prevent moisture from escaping - this method produces a meal very similar to a baked potato. Potato chunks also commonly appear as a stew ingredient.

Regional dishes

Mashed potatoes form a major component of several traditional dishes from the British Isles such as shepherd's pie, bubble and squeak, champ and the 'tatties' which accompany haggis. They are also often sautéed to accompany a meal.

Potatoes are very popular in continental Europe as well. In Italy, they serve to make a type of pasta called gnocchi. Potatoes form one of the main ingredients in many soups such as the pseudo-French vichyssoise and Albanian potato and cabbage soup.

In the United States, potatoes have become one of the most widely-consumed crops, and thus have a variety of preparation methods and condiments. One popular favorite involves a baked potato with cheddar cheese (or sour cream and chives) on top, and in New England "smashed potatoes" (a chunkier variation on mashed potatoes, retaining the peel) have great popularity.

In Scandinavia, especially Sweden and Finland, newly harvested, early ripening varieties are considered a special delicacy. Boiled whole and served with dill, these "new potatoes" are traditionally consumed together with pickled Baltic herring.

A traditional Canary Islands dish is Canarian wrinkly potatoes or Papas arragudas.

Toxic compounds in potatoes

Potatoes contain glycoalkaloids, toxic compounds, of which the most prevalent are solanine and chaconine. Cooking at high temperatures (over 170 °C or 340 °F) partly destroys these. The concentration of glycoalkaloid in wild potatoes suffices to produce toxic effects in humans. Glycoalkaloids occur in the greatest concentrations just underneath the skin of the tuber, and they increase with age and exposure to light. Glycoalkaloids may cause headaches, diarrhea, cramps and in severe cases coma and death; however, poisoning from potatoes occurs very rarely. Light exposure also causes greening, thus giving a visual clue as to areas of the tuber that may have become more toxic; however, this does not provide a definitive guide, as greening and glycoalkaloid accumulation can occur independently of each other. Some varieties of potato contain greater glycoalkaloid concentrations than others; breeders developing new varieties test for this, and sometimes have to discard an otherwise promising cultivar.

Breeders try to keep solanine levels below 0.2 mg/g (200 ppmw). However, when even these commercial varieties turn green, they can approach concentrations of solanine of 1 mg/g (1000 ppmw). Some studies suggest that 200 mg of solanine can constitute a dangerous dose. This dose would require eating 1 average-sized spoiled potato or 4 to 9 good potatoes (over 3 pounds or 1.4 kg) at one time. The National Toxicology Program suggests that the average American consumes 12.5 mg/person/day of solanine from potatoes. Dr. Douglas L. Holt, the State Extension Specialist for Food Safety at the University of Missouri - Columbia, notes that no reported cases of potato-source solanine poisoning have occurred in the U.S. in the last 50 years and most cases involved eating green potatoes or drinking potato-leaf tea.

Solanine is also found in other plants, in particular the deadly nightshade. This poison affects the nervous system causing weakness and confusion. See Solanine for more information.

See also List of poisonous plants

Cultivation

Potatoes are generally grown from the eyes of another potato and not from seed. Home gardeners often plant a piece of potato with two or three eyes in a hill of mounded soil. Commercial growers plant potatoes as a row crop using seed tubers, young plants or microtubers and may mound the entire row.

At harvest time, gardeners generally dig up potatoes with a three-prong "grape" (or "graip") or spading fork, but in larger plots, the plough can serve as the most expeditious implement for unearthing potatoes. Commercial harvesting is typically done with large potato harvesters which scoop up the plant and the surrounding earth. This is transported up an apron chain consisting of steel links several feet wide. This separates some of the dirt. The chain deposits into an area where further separation occurs. Different designs employ different systems at this point. The most complex designs use vine choppers and shakers, along with a blower system or "Flying Willard" to separate the potatoes from the plant. The result is then usually run past workers who continue to sort out plant material, stones, and rotten potatoes before the potatoes are continuously delivered to a wagon or truck. Further inspection and separation occurs when the potatoes are unloaded from the field vehicles and put into storage.

To reduce the ground till it is completely free of root-weeds, may be considered as a desiderutum in potato husbandry; though in many seasons these operations cannot be perfectly executed, without losing the proper time for planting, which never ought to be beyond the first of May, if circumstances do not necessarily interdict it. Three plowings, with necessary harrowings and rollings, are necessary in most cases before the land is in suitable condition.

It is important to harvest potatoes before heavy frosts begin, since field frost damages potatoes in the ground, and even cold weather makes potatoes more susceptible to bruising and possibly later rotting which can quickly ruin a large stored crop.

Seed potato crops are 'rogued' in some countries to eliminate diseased plants or those of a different variety from the seed crop.

Pests

A major pest of potato plants is the Colorado potato beetle.

The potato root nematode is a microscopic worm that thrives on the roots, thus causing the potato plants to wilt. Since its eggs can survive in the soil for several years, crop rotation is recommended.

New potatoes

Potatoes are generally cured after harvest to thicken the skin. Prior to curing, the skin is very thin and delicate and the potatoes are known as "new potatoes" and are particularly flavorful. New potatoes are often harvested by the home gardener by "grabbling", i.e. pulling out the young tubers by hand while leaving the plant in place. In markets one sometimes finds thin-skinned varieties sold as new potatoes.

Production

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, the worldwide production of potatoes in 2005 was 322 million metric tons* which makes it the fifth highest production crop in the world. The leading producers of potatoes in 2005 were:
Country Production,
in million metric tons
China 73
Russia 36
India 25
Ukraine 19
United States 19
Germany 11
Poland 11

References and external links

  • World Geography of the Potato at http://www.lanra.uga.edu/potato/
  • Reference for potato history: The Vegetable Ingredients Cookbook by Christine Ingram, Lorenz Books, 1996 ISBN 1859672647
  • The History and Social Influence of the Potato by Redcliffe N. Salaman ISBN 0521316235
  • Hamilton, Andy & Dave, (2004), Potatoes - Solanum tuberosums retrieved on 4 May 2005
  • BBC: DNA shows all modern potatoes can trace roots back to Peru
  • Spooner, D.M. et al. 2005. A single domestication for potato based on multilocus amplified fragment length polymorphism genotyping. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Published online before print October 3, 2005
  • GLKS Potato Database
  • Centro Internacional de la Papa - CIP (International Potato Center) at http://www.cipotato.org/

Potatoes | Poisonous plants | Quechua loanwords | Root Vegetables | Vegetables

بطاطس | Бульба | Patata | Lilek brambor | Taten | Kartoffel | Kartoffel | Solanum tuberosum | Terpomo | Pomme de terre | Pataca | 감자 | Krumpir | Kentang | Solanum tuberosum | תפוח אדמה | Kiazi | Bulvė | Burgonya | Ovy | Aardappel | Eerpel | ジャガイモ | Potet | Potet | باتات | Ziemniak | Batata | Cartof | Картофель | Potato | Krompir | Кромпир | Peruna | Potatis | Patatas | Patates | Crompire | 薯仔 | 马铃薯

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Potato".

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