A new age for the ancient potato.

• Author: Werner, Louis

At the International Potato Center in Lima, scientists are revolutionizing potato cultivation worldwide

Of the world's four major food crops, the potato has always been treated as the poor cousin of wheat, rice, and maize. But things are looking up for the spud, and before long it might well be taking its rightful place at the head of the table. When that happens, surely it will be scientists from the International Potato Center (known by its Spanish acronym CIP) in Lima, Peru, who make the first toast, for it is they who pay greatest tribute to this long-neglected miracle food.

The potato's agronomic and nutritional properties are indeed miraculous. Its fast growth produces edible matter just sixty days after planting. Its biologic value, measured as the proportion of ingested nitrogen retained by the human body, ranks just below eggs, fish, and milk. It provides more calories and protein per unit of land and growing time than any other crop, and yields five times more per acre than other staple grains.

CIP scientists have worked hard to give the potato its just desserts. Since the center's founding in 1971, its task has been demanding, but its successes have been many. Breeding new varieties, collecting endangered species, and recording ancient farming practices--even publishing a cookbook with recipes for potato pizza and spicy orange potato doughnuts--is just the beginning of the center's job. According to Director General Hubert Zandstra, CIP will not rest until its Green Revolution sends the potato all over the world.

There is no doubt the potato has come a long way in a very short time. Unknown outside the Western Hemisphere until the sixteenth century, it has now spread to the far corners of the globe. It is a versatile crop, indeed, growing equally well at the equator and the Arctic Circle, at sea level and at fourteen thousand feet, in temperate climates and in heavy frost. There is even a tropical potato, Solanum hygrothermicum, grown by the Machiganga Indians in the Peruvian Amazon.

South America, of course, is the land of many root crops. Cassava, ulluco, mashua, and maca--to name but a few--all have amazing characteristics of their own. One is a super-fast grower, the second thrives at tremendously high elevations, the next suppresses the libido, while the last excites it--and to think that all are commonly served in a single Peruvian stew!

But our modern diet, and indeed modern history itself, is most closely linked to the potato. High in vitamin C, it made long sea voyages possible by preventing sailor's scurvy. It fueled both Napoleon's march to Russia and the English Industrial Revolution. Its harvest failure last century spurred the Irish immigration to the United States. And in just the last twenty years it has become a major crop in China and India, where it is now relied upon to feed their masses--almost half the world's population.

The potato has long been South America's most widely eaten food, as proven by its great linguistic diversity. Known as iomza in Colombia's Chibcha language, poni in Patagonia's Araucanian, and amka and choque in the Bolivian altiplano's Aymara, the cultivated potato spread across the continent to its northern and southern extremities. It didn't seem to jump into Central America, however, and in pre-Columbian Mexico existed only in the wild.

The Spanish word papa was borrowed from Quechua, the lingua franca of the Inca Empire's Andean heartland, where potatoes were...