How the potato grew in popularityP:

From a humble tuber to one of the world's main food crops

Here are more facts, some not so well-known, about this very popular item in our day-to-day meals. The potato which is one of the most popular vegetables worldwide and one of the world's main food crops today, was long ago, a humble tuber growing in the valleys, high up in the Andes mountains in South America. It was cultivated long before the Incas established their kingdom. It is a vegetable that has a history of about 800 years.

The potato is a tuber. The swollen end of an underground stem is called a stolen. Tubers grow from this stolen, usually about six or seven, sometimes as many as 20. What we call potatoes and eat are these tubers.

How did this tuber become one of the world's main food crops? Rice is the staple food of more than half the world's population. Maize comes second.

The potato is a close rival for second place.

The Spaniards who came to S. America in 1520, a little after the Portuguese came to Sri Lanka, found the potato being cultivated in the Andes valleys facing the Pacific coast. It was a food crop in the region extending from present day Chile to Ecuador. They, the Spa, brought the potato across the Atlantic to Europe, probably about 1550. Others followed.

John Hawkins, a slave trader is said to have brought it to Ireland in 1565. Walter Raleigh, soldier, explorer and favourite of Queen Elizabeth I brought the potato to England in 1586. Francis Drake introduced the potato to France and the Netherlands and soon after, this new comer was found in the gardens of the aristocracy in Germany.

There are interesting anecdotes about the early efforts to cultivate this foreign plant. Here is one such anecdote. Thomas Heriot, a mathematician, planted some seed potato on his estate in Ireland. The plants bore small berries which the mathematician tried to eat. He found them inedible (not fit to be eaten). Disappointed and angry he ordered his gardener to uproot the plants.

It was then that the tubers growing under the soil were discovered. (The cultivated plants don't bear berries like those growing in their native lands).

Here is another. When the potato was introduced into Germany, it was grown only in the gardens of the aristocracy. The ordinary farmers were not interested in this foreign plant. King Fredrick the Great resorted to a trick to make farmers grow potatoes. He had the royal estates guarded by soldiers. The farmers thinking that this must be a very valuable plant, slipped into His Majesty's fields in the night and stole plants for their own farms.

Today Germany is one of the largest consumers of potato and Germany produces 6% of the world's total production. Russia is the largest producer. Nearly 1/3 of the world's potato is produced in Russia, other large producers are Poland, China and India.

When the Dutch Spaniards, British and Germans began to extend their empires into Asia, Africa, America, Australia in the 18th and 19th centuries, they introduced the potato to their new colonies.

In countries where the soil and climate were suitable, as in India, potato cultivation spread rapidly.

By the end of the 17th century, the potato was the major crop in Ireland, from then on until mid 19th century it was the staple food of the majority in Ireland. Then in 1846 and 1847 potato crops failed due to a blight (plant disease).

There was a great famine. People had nothing to eat for they were not growing any cereal. This potato famine in Ireland is one of the major disasters recorded in history. People who could afford migrated to America.

This story recounts the opposite of what happened in Ireland. Early in 2006, there was a great shortage of rice in Bangladesh, due to the great floods the previous year. The Government asked the people to eat potatoes. It was not a proposal like the advice Queen Marie Antoinette gave the French peasants, when they complained that they had no bread to eat. "If there is no bread eat cake", she said.

Potato is cultivated on a large-scale in Bangladesh. The year before the rice shortage, the potato harvest had been 7 million tonnes. So there was sense in the Government asking the people to eat potato as there was no rice.

As you must be knowing Bangladesh was part of India until the partition in 1947. The British who ruled India from the late 18th century encouraged the cultivation of potato and exported it to their colonies like Ceylon.

We continued to import potatoes from India until 1961 or 1962. Now potato is grown in the Nuwara Eliya and Badulla districts, Welimada is one place where potato is cultivated on a large-scale.

Although potato is generally called 'ala' in Sinhala, it has a special name - arthapal, to distinguish it from other yams and tubers like 'innala', 'kiriala'. Arthapal is from the Dutch 'aardappel'. So, it must have been the Dutch who introduced the potato to our country and we Lankans too called it by the Dutch name.

The Germans call it Kartoffel which means "apple of the earth". Potato is from batala, a word closely related to the original name for this tuber.

- Sumana Saparamadu