'The Devil's Apple': How did potatoes end up on our tables?

In 1834, the British Royal Warship HMS Beagle was on a scientific expedition to Patagonia and stopped at Chiloé Island off the west coast of Chile. Charles Darwin, a young naturalist on board, landed on the island and began to study the island's flora and fauna.

At this time, no one knew that this energetic young naturalist would lay the foundation for a great theory with far-reaching influence during his expedition trips around the world.

Darwin at age 51 | Messrs. Maull and Fox/ Wikimedia Commons

There, Darwin was fascinated by a South American nightshade plant that had great adaptability. He wrote in his journal about his astonishing discovery: "The same plant occurs in the barren mountains of central Chile, where no rain falls for six months, and in the moist forests of the southern islands."

This Solanaceae plant is the potato (Solanum tuberosum). He found that because the climate here is warm and humid, similar to the British island of Great Britain, the potato plants grown on the island are tall, up to more than 1 meter tall, and the underground tubers are small and oval, very similar to the potatoes cultivated in the UK. After being boiled in water, this potato becomes bland.

Darwin collected potato specimens from the Chilean island of Chiloé and brought them back to England. He inferred that the potatoes on the island were all wild, and that the local residents domesticated and cultivated these wild species, thus evolving them into potatoes, a crop widely cultivated around the world.

Out of South America and into Europe

Today, people are re-examining the potato specimens Darwin collected from Chile, hoping to use genetic codes to unravel the mystery of potato history. In order to trace the ancestors of modern cultivated potato varieties, researchers extracted DNA from 88 samples.

The findings suggest that modern potatoes originated from Andean potatoes and Chilean potatoes, both of which contributed to today's cultivated potatoes.

Chilean potatoes | Avodrocc/Wikimedia Commons

Most scholars believe that Andean potatoes are older. 8,000 years ago, Indians living in the Andes plateau began to cultivate potatoes. Since then, potatoes have spread northward and southward. In today's Peruvian Andes plateau and Chile's central and southern lowlands, locals gradually cultivated thousands of different potato varieties, making these two regions the two important origins of modern potato varieties.

For thousands of years, the cultivation of potatoes has been limited to South America, where they were an important food for the South American Indians, but they were not well known to the world. A popular legend is that Columbus brought potatoes back to Europe, but Columbus never set foot in South America. There is no evidence that Columbus, who "discovered" America, had ever encountered potatoes - otherwise, this explorer who paid close attention to cultivated crops would at least have left a few words about potatoes.

A potato native to the Andes | Kiwa Natural Life/ Wikimedia Commons

As Spanish colonists moved deeper into South America, Europeans began to pay attention to Andean potatoes. According to the records of Spanish explorers, potatoes had a great influence on the Incas and supported the operation of the entire Inca Kingdom. In the eyes of the Incas, this high-yield crop has its own soul. Each type of potato has a unique name, and they are revered by the Incas as the "God of Harvest." If there is a year with a poor potato harvest, the locals must hold a grand and bloody sacrifice to offer sacrifices to the "God of Harvest", including not only livestock but also boys and girls. Only in this way can the "God of Harvest" calm his anger and bless the harvest next year. Such bloody rituals have been passed down in the Inca Kingdom for thousands of years.

The Spanish colonists only had gold in their eyes, and they were not very interested in local crops. In the bloody conquest process, the Spanish killed the Inca king, destroyed the Inca kingdom, and took potatoes back to Europe as an exotic specialty.

The English name of potato actually has a long history. The Taino Indians called sweet potatoes "batata"; in the Quechua language of South America, potatoes are called "papa". This word became the Spanish "patata", and later became the English "potato". Today, the potato in English actually originally referred to the sweet potato. In order to avoid confusion, people later used "sweet potato" to refer to sweet potatoes, and "potato" became the special name for potatoes.

Sweet potato is called "sweet potato" | Louisiana Sea Grant College Program / Wikimedia Commons

Later, Andean potatoes and Chilean potatoes left their homeland and landed in Europe through different channels. In 1596, Swiss botanist Gaspard Bauhin officially named this Solanum plant from South America as Solanum tuberosum. The specific epithet "tuberosum" means underground tuber. This was also the first scientific description of potatoes.

The devil's apple, the staple food of the poor

Unlike the sweet potato, another popular American crop, for a long time after the potato entered Europe, it was only an ornamental flower in the gardens of European aristocrats, and its nutritious underground tubers were used as feed for livestock.

Potato blossoms | Danny S./Wikimedia Commons

Potatoes were hidden underground, and people thought they were as evil and mysterious as mandrakes. They even thought eating potatoes would cause leprosy. Because they were worried that potatoes were poisonous, people also called them "devil's apples."

In the eyes of Europeans at that time, potatoes were aphrodisiacs used to induce sexual desire (what a strange rumor!), not for eating. When Shakespeare wrote the comedy "The Merry Wives of Windsor", he made the lustful, greedy, and boastful ruined nobleman Sir John Falstaff shout at the Boar's Head Inn: "Let it rain potatoes!"

When potatoes came to Europe, they endured all kinds of misunderstandings from people and spread in a very low-key manner.

In the 18th century, Ireland was under the rule of the British Empire, and most of the arable land was controlled by British landlords and nobles. In the remaining fields and wilderness, Irish farmers discovered that potatoes, a plain-looking plant, could thrive in harsh environments. The Irish quickly accepted potatoes and took the lead in large-scale cultivation in Europe. Potatoes were also known as the "staple food of the poor."

Later studies showed that Chilean potatoes were better adapted to Ireland's long-day climate, growing better and producing higher yields. When Darwin discovered potatoes growing freely on the Chilean island of Chiloé, millions of Irish people were living almost entirely on Chilean potatoes.

Van Gogh painted The Potato Eaters in 1885 | Wikimedia Commons

Later, more and more countries began to cultivate potatoes as food, and the methods of cooking potatoes gradually increased. With the strong promotion of many potato lovers, potatoes eventually became one of the most popular foods in Europe.

Large-scale potato cultivation finally ended the era of food shortage in Europe. Potatoes began to appear all over the world, and the promotion and cultivation of American crops such as potatoes and sweet potatoes in China also supported the population surge during the "Kangxi and Qianlong prosperity" of the Qing Dynasty.

Late blight, great famine

In the 1840s, when humanity seemed to see hope of saying goodbye to famine, potato late blight caused by Phytophthora infestans broke out in Europe.

Potatoes infected with late blight | Howard F. Schwartz/ Wikimedia Commons

In order to pursue high yields on extremely limited land, the Irish cultivated a single variety of Chilean potatoes for a long time. Due to the extreme lack of genetic diversity, potatoes were devastated by blight. Millions of Irish people died of hunger, and nearly two million were forced to immigrate to the United States and Australia.

The Irish famine was the most horrific tragedy in European history. Darwin, who was researching and writing at home in England at the time, also had great sympathy for the misfortune of the Irish. Over the next forty years, he devoted a great deal of energy to studying potato late blight, the effects of asexual and sexual reproduction on species adaptability, and funded a potato breeding program in Ireland.

A statue in Dublin, Ireland, commemorating the victims of the Great Famine. | ​​Ron Cogswell / Wikimedia Commons

Potato late blight has also greatly promoted the development of plant immunology. Research has found that in the potato-producing areas of the Andes Mountains in South America, local Indians would alternately plant different potato varieties in the same area, so that even if pests and diseases occurred, the crops would not be completely destroyed.

The outbreak of potato late blight made humans realize for the first time that crop safety has such a huge impact on the entire human society. After years of late blight, people once again introduced Andean potato varieties with higher genetic diversity from South America, hybridized them with local Chilean potato varieties, and finally successfully bred new varieties with stronger adaptability and disease resistance, and potato production was restored.

Potatoes are a gift from nature to mankind. From the Andes Mountains to the Chilean island of Chiloé, we are grateful to the South American Indians who cultivated thousands of potato varieties. They are unknown in the long river of history, and the splendid civilization they once created has also been destroyed, but the germplasm resources cultivated by them that have been passed down to this day allow us to still enjoy the taste of potatoes today.

Would you like some baked potatoes? | Johan Jönsson (Julle)/ Wikimedia Commons

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