"The potato was first domesticated in the region of modern-day southern Peru and extreme northwestern Bolivia This event took place between the years 8000 BC and 5000 BC."
-Potato, Wikipedia
"As wild potatoes taste bitter and contain
small amounts of toxins, early cultures must have spent quite a bit of
an effort to select the right tubers for cultivation that are more tasty
and less toxic. In the course of the centuries potatoes developed to be
an important staple food and a main energy source for early Peruvian
cultures, the Incas and the Spanish conquerors."
"In the Andes potatoes are one of four major root/tuber staple crops.
There are about 200 different wild types found from Venezuela to Chile,
with the highest concentration around Lake Titicaca."
"Compared with grains, tubers are inherently more productive. If the head
of a wheat or rice plant grows too big, the plant will fall over, with
fatal results. Growing underground, tubers are not limited by the rest
of the plant. In 2008 a Lebanese farmer dug up a potato that weighed
nearly 25 pounds. It was bigger than his head."
-How the Potato Changed the World, Smithsonian Mag
"The potato
was carried on to Italy and England about 1585, to Belgium and Germany
by 1587, to Austria about 1588, and to France around 1600. Wherever the
potato was introduced, it was considered weird, poisonous, and downright
evil. In France and elsewhere, the potato was accused
of causing not only leprosy, but also syphilis, narcosis, scronfula,
early death, sterillity, and rampant sexuality, and of destroying the
soil where it grew."
-History of Potatoes, What's Cooking America
"Large-scale cultivation of the crop began only in
the beginning of the 19th century. Initially, the crop
was used as a medicinal plant and grown by pharmacists,
in Spain in particular. It was later introduced to other
parts of Europe by merchants and kings, who encouraged
the cultivation of this efficient plant to increase
local agricultural production."
-History of the Potato, The Potato Information Site
"Winds from southern England carried the fungus
to the countryside around Dublin. The blight spread throughout the fields
as fungal spores settled on the leaves of healthy potato plants, multiplied
and were carried in the millions by cool breezes to surrounding plants.
Under ideal moist conditions, a single infected potato plant could infect
thousands more in just a few days.
The attacked plants fermented while providing
the nourishment the fungus needed to live, emitting a nauseous stench as
they blackened and withered in front of the disbelieving eyes of Irish
peasants."
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