Types of Potatoes

All Blue  

Origin or earliest documented: Bolivia, South America

Legal status: South American traditional heirloom variety. Bred before the notion of commodification of plants was conceived. Belongs to the cultural commons.

Characteristics: Round or oval tubers. Skin and flesh are dark blue/mauve. The potato is high in dry matter; its fluffiness allows it to fry and mash well but it tends to disintegrate when boiled. It is sensitive to scurf and requires frequent watering.

Other facts: Also known as Blaue Schweden and Congo.

 

 

 

 

 

The voyages of New World discovery and conquest: Christopher Columbus, Juan Díaz de Solís, Diego de Almagro, Francisco Pizarro, Vasco Núnes de Balboa and Mártín Fernández de Enciso, Nueva Coronica y Buen Gobierno, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala 1600 – 1615, Peru.

Ozette 

Origin or earliest documented: Obtained by Maka Indians of the Neah Bay Tribe from Spanish explorers from South America in 1791.

Legal status: South American traditional heirloom variety. Bred before the notion of commodification of plants was conceived. Belongs to the cultural commons.

Characteristics: Ozette is considered a fingerling potato, as its size ranges from 3-7 inches in length and 0.75-1.5 inches in diameter. This potato has an earthy and nutty flavor, similar to the taste of cooked dry beans, with a firm flesh and very creamy texture.

Other facts: To increase the production and promotion of this variety, a partnership was formed in 2006 between the Slow Food Seattle chapter, the Makah Nation, the Seattle chapter of Chefs Collaborative, several farmers, and a laboratory that produces potato seed for the USDA.

Indirect contact with Europeans had a devastating effect on the lives of Makah people. Thousands of tribal members died from epidemics of smallpox, tuberculosis, influenza and whooping cough, devastating families and causing the Makah unfathomable grief, confusion and fear. Due to this, traditions that had been passed through generations were lost.  Successive outbreaks of smallpox devastated the southernmost villages in 1852 just before the signing of the Treaty of Neah Bay.

Reference:

Native Peoples of the Olympic Peninsula: Who We Are , ed. Jacilee Wray. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002.

 

Pink Fir Apple 

Origin or earliest documented: Central Europe, 1850s

Legal status: Traditional landrace variety. Bred before the notion of commodification of plants was conceived. Belongs to the cultural commons.

Characteristics: Long irregularly growing tubers with pink skin and light yellow flesh. Considered a delicacy, it is excellent for salad and is preferably eaten with the skin on. Remarkably long cultivating period with a relatively small yield. Can be stored for long a time.

Other facts: Pink Fir Apple is one of the oldest varieties in Europe, bred soon after the potato came from South America. Its origin is unknown, but it has been cultivated in various European countries since at least 1850.

Regardless of methods of preparation, this root is tasteless and starchy, though it does provide sufficient nourishment for those who do not require more than sustenance. The potato is correctly blamed for flatulence; but what is flatulence to the vigorous digestions of peasants and workers?

Reference:

L’Encyclopédie, Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert, 1751 – 1777.

 

 

With the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, demand for cheap food rose sharply in Europe. Factory owners wanted an economical means of feeding their workers while retaining their workers’ productivity. The potato found increasing demand as an ideal solution, due to its being a good source of food energy, its high yield, and easy cultivatation.

Reference:

collections.ic.gc.ca

 

King Edward

Origin or earliest documented: UK, late 1900s

Legal status: Breeder unknown. Bred before the European Plant Variety Protection Act was established. Belongs to the cultural commons.

Characteristics: These tubers are oval to long oval, small, with red/white skin, shallow eyes, and cream-colored flesh with a floury texture. Historically a popular variety with a delicious taste.

Other facts: Because of its sensitivity to diseases, commercial producers rarely cultivate this variety.

 

Lumper

Origin or earliest documented: Ireland, early 1800s

Legal status: Traditional landrace variety. Bred before the notion of commodification of plants was conceived. Belongs to the cultural commons.

Characteristics: Medium to large ‘lumpy-shaped’ tubers with white skin and white flesh.

Other facts: This variety is infamous for its vulnerability to blight, which caused the Irish potato famine in the 1840s.

What became known as The Great Famine of 1845 was one of the greatest catastrophes of the nineteenth century. It resulted in the deaths of millions of people from starvation and disease and a decline in Ireland’s population through emigration. It was thought by many to be an English induced famine used by a greedy government to solve “the Irish question.” Though the potato failed from blight, the country’s farming was strong. Crops were taken from farmers to be funneled to the expanding workforce of the industrial boom in England as well as its army overseas.

Reference:

Brian Warfield, The Wolf Tones

 

 

Cowhorn

Origin or earliest documented: North America, early 1800’s

Legal status: North American traditional landrace variety. Bred before the notion of commodification of plants was conceived. Belongs to the cultural commons.

Characteristics: Late-season. Fingerling tubers with pointed tips, dark purple skin and dry, mealy, white flesh. Good for storage. Excellent resistance to common scab and late blight. Maturity is mid-to-late and it is low yielding. The Cowhorn variety is a heritage variety with uncertain origins. It has been grown in New York State since before 1853.

Other facts: the Cowhorn variety is also known as Purple Cowhorn and Seneca Cowhorn. There is some speculation that it might be identical to La Crotte d’Ours (Bear Poop), a Canadian heritage variety, thought to have roots in Scotland.

The first potatoes in Idaho were planted by a Presbyterian missionary, Henry Harmon Spaulding. Spaulding established a mission at Lapwai in 1836 to bring Christianity to the Nez Perce Indians. He wanted to demonstrate that they could provide food for themselves through agriculture rather than hunting and gathering. His first crop was a failure, but the second year the crop was good. After that, potato growing ceased for a number of years due to a massacre by Indians of a nearby mission, prompting Spaulding to leave the area.

Reference:

“Potato – History of Potatoes,” © 2004 by Linda Stradley, from the website: http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/PotatoHistory.htm

 

 

“We all camped in our wagons the first summer, but we all got homes built by winter; these houses were built in the present meetinghouse lot in a fort. I spent the summer working on ditches, canton roads, and hauling poles and wood from the canyon. I raised thirty-three bushels of potatoes, which is all that was raised in Franklin that summer except for a few onions.”

-          William Goforth Nelson, one of the early settlers of Franklin, Idaho, from the summer of 1860, from http://www.potatoexpo.com/history.htm.

In the river valleys, where water was easily diverted, and with the rich volcanic-ash soil, the settlers raised a few more potatoes than they needed and found that the extra potatoes resulted in a good cash crop. From this small beginning, Idaho’s farmers set out on the conquest of the potato markets of the United States.

 

The discovery of gold in Idaho was of utmost importance to the growth of the potato industry. Much of the early potato production was used to feed miners and fields of potatoes were grown to accommodate the men in lead, gold and silver camps.

Reference:

http://www.foodreference.com/

 

Garnet Chile

Origin or earliest documented: Bred by reverend Chauncey E. Goodrich in New York 1853.

Legal status: Bred before the Plant Patent Act of 1930. Belongs to the cultural commons.

Characteristics: Late-season. Round tubers with light-red skin and moist, firm, white flesh. Good for storage. Good resistance to scab. Large, tall plants.

Other facts: Perhaps the most influential variety in North American potato growing. Garnet Chile is a seedling of the Rough Purple Chile procured by Goodrich from South America in 1851, in an attempt to stave off the then on-going problem of potato degeneration. Off-spring of the Garnet Chili subsequently produced a vast percentage of the most successful potato varieties of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries such as Early Rose and Russet Burbank.

Reference:

The Potato: a Compilation of Information from Every Available Source, Eugene H. Grubb & W. S. Guilford, Garden City: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1912

 

Early Rose

Origin or earliest documented: Bred by Albert Bresee in New York ,1857.

Legal status: Bred before the Plant Patent Act of 1930. Belongs to the cultural commons.

Characteristics: Tubers are a flattened oval, rather regular, with shallow to half-sunken eyes distributed over the whole surface of the tuber, pale pink skin, white flesh, and sometimes a rosy vascular ring. Grows well in a variety of soil types.

Other facts: Early Rose was the first commercially produced variety in the US. Bresee got the astounding sum of 1000 dollars per pound for the true seeds of the plant from the seed company B.K. Bliss. This cultivar was widely grown under a variety of names such as Antwerp, Boston Market, Chicago Market, and Clark’s No. 1 until the 1960s, when new, high yield cultivars were introduced.

Reference:

The Potato: a Compilation of Information from Every Available Source, Eugene H. Grubb & W. S. Guilford, Garden City: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1912

 

Burbank Potato

Origin or earliest documented: Bred/found by Luther Burbank in Massachusetts between 1872 and 1874.

Legal status: Bred before the Plant Patent Act  of 1930 was legislated. Belongs to the cultural commons.

Characteristics: High yielding, uniform, stores well, a good processing potato.

Other: This potato launched the plant breeding career of the nation’s most famous plant breeder, Luther Burbank. In May 1872, Burbank happened upon a ripening seed ball on an ‘Early Rose’ potato plant in his truck patch, and from it raised 23 seedlings. In 1875 Burbank sold his interest in the best white variety to a seed man who did him the honor of naming the new potato ‘The Burbank Potato’. By 1900, the commercial value of the Burbank potato was $17 million annually.

“There are without doubt some human beings in every nation, who, according to our present standards of civilization are truly civilized, but grave doubts may be entertained as to any community or any nation who could in any way measure up even to this standard scale of life, where we find more and more  ‘freedom’, but even man today is far from free. Slaves yet to war, crime and ignorance — the only ‘unpardonable sin.’ Slaves to unnumbered ancient ‘taboos,’ superstitions, prejudices and fallacies, which one by one are slowly but surely weakening under the clear light of the morning of science; the savior of mankind. Science which has opened our eyes to the vastness of the universe and given us light, truth and freedom from fear where once was darkness, ignorance and superstition. There is no personal salvation, there is no national salvation, except through science.”

-          From “Why I am an Infidel,” by Luther Burbank, American Atheist Magazine, 22 December, 1903.    

 

Russet Burbank

Origin or earliest documented: Potato grower Leon Sweet, Denver, found the sport in his field 1914.

Legal status: Bred before the Plant Patent Act of 1930. Belongs to the cultural commons.

Characteristics: Tubers are large, uniform, long and cylindrical or slightly flattened, with russeted skin. The eyes are shallow and the flesh is white. Matures late, requires a 140 to 150 day growing season to produce maximum yields and quality. Yields are moderately high.

The ‘Russet Burbank’ potato is prized for processing. When used for making potato chips, it results in a dark-colored chip due to caramelizing of high sugar content. Potatoes mature in about 110 days from planting the seed. It is sensitive to diseases and requires high levels of pesticide.

Other facts: McDonald’s buys more than 3 billion pounds of potatoes annually, most of which are Russet Burbank.

In 1990, Americans chowed down about 5 billion pounds of french fries. Most of those fries came from Northwest-grown Russet Burbanks, the favorite potato of fast-food restaurants. Characterized by their oblong shape and dark-tan skin, Russet Burbanks also make good baked potatoes. Nearly all the potatoes grown in Idaho, our number one spud-producing state, are Russet Burbanks. Idaho, Washington, and Oregon together produced half of the nation’s $2 billion potato crop last year.

Reference:

Julie Corliss, Agricultural Research, April 1, 1991.

 

McDonald’s is searching for a potato that needs fewer pesticides and less water, but with a texture and taste, when fried, that will please customers. Because McDonald’s buys more than 3 billion pounds of potatoes annually around the globe, it has the power to effectively dictate whether a variety sprouts or winds up in the less-lucrative supermarket freezer’s crinkle-cut bin – or worse yet, banished to become dehydrated taters. “It’s a card game, where McDonald’s holds nine-tenths of the cards,” said Jeanne Debons, the Potato Variety Management Institute’s [LINK: Potato Variety Management Institute] director.

The institute was established in 2005 by the Idaho, Oregon, and Washington potato commissions to handle licensing and royalties from new potatoes developed at universities and federal research facilities in the three states. The drive behind the institute often appears to be to present new potato varieties to McDonald’s.

McDonald’s still relies on the Russet Burbank for many of its fries, even though this 130-year-old variety takes an eternity to mature, gulps water and falls victim to rots and other diseases, meaning farmers must douse it in chemicals. Socially conscious investors want McDonald’s to help cut pesticides to protect the environment and farmworkers’ health. Still, coming up with a spud stud is no mean feat: Russet Burbanks, with robust storage qualities, consistent texture and taste, remain Mickey D’s mainstay, though this variety brought west by Massachusetts botanist Luther Burbank in 1875 is costly to produce.

Reference:

“The Next Super Spud,” by John Miller for the Associated Press, October 3, 2009

 

McCain Foods Limited is the largest french fry producer in the world, claiming a global market share of almost 33%.

Reference:

http://www.potatopro.com/

 

All Red

Origin or earliest documented: Bred by independent breeder Robert Lobitz, Paynesville, Minnesota and released through Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) in about 1984.

Legal status: Robert Lobitz has made the enlightened decision to share his breed instead of taking royalties for it. Therefore, the variety belongs to the cultural commons, even though it was bred after the Plant Variety Protection Act of 1970 was legislated.

Characteristics: Brilliant red skin and pinkish-red flesh, smooth skin and shallow eyes. Medium to large round tubers. Red inside and out. By far the best producing of the reds. A surprising basketful under each plant. Makes a very attractive potato salad and is delicious steamed or boiled. A really big midseason potato, with tall robust plants about eighteen to twenty-two inches high.

Other facts: This variety is sold by several seed companies under the name Cranberry Red.

SSE was founded in 1975 by Diane Ott Whealy and Kent Whealy to honor the tradition of preserving and sharing. The largest non-governmental seed bank in the United States, SSE finds its home in Decorah, Iowa, on the 890-acre Heritage Farm. They maintain more than 25,000 endangered vegetable varieties, most having been brought to North America by members’ ancestors who emigrated from Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and other parts of the world. Unlike Fort Knox, Heritage Farm is not surrounded by security fences and guards. Our perimeter is patrolled by Bald Eagles, red-tailed hawks, deer, raccoons and other wildlife.

SSE is a non-profit, member supported organization that saves and shares the heirloom seeds of our garden heritage, forming a living legacy that can be passed down through generations. The loyal SSE members have distributed an estimated 1 million samples of rare garden seeds since the organization’s founding nearly 35 years ago. Those seeds now are widely used by seed companies, small farmers supplying local and regional markets, chefs and home gardeners and cooks, alike.

Reference:

http://www.seedsavers.org

 

Ajunhuirii

Origin or earliest documented: The Andes, South America.

Legal status: Not registered on any national variety list.

Characteristics: Semi-wild species

Other facts: In the valley of Ajawiri Marka, Western Bolivia, abundant weedy and cultivated forms of Solanum Ajunhuirii grow. The farming practices of Aymara subsistence cultivators facilitate crossbreeding between wild and cultivated gene pools. Farmers maintain multiple potato varieties and distinguish various cultivars, varying from 10 to 32 cultivars per household. In general, Altiplano farmers are disposed to experiment with new varieties, which are grown for two years and evaluated for survivability, yield and culinary quality and then either accepted or discarded.

Reference

T. Johns and S.L. Keens, “Ongoing Evolution of the Potato on the Antiplano of Western Bolivia,” Economic Botany, 1986.

 

A new agreement between six indigenous communities and the International Potato Centre in Cuzco, Peru, heart of the old Inca civilization in the Andes Mountains of Latin America, recognizes that these communities own the rights to this unique potato strain that they have developed and grown.

The new agreement “means that Andean communities can unlock the potato gene bank and repatriate biological diversity to farming communities and the natural environment for local and global benefit,” The Association for Nature and Sustainable Development (ANDES) says in a statement. The new agreement, called the “Agreement on the Repatriation, Restoration and Monitoring of Agro-biodiversity of Native Potatoes and Associated Community Knowledge Systems,” will challenge the trend of “privatizing genetic resources and indigenous knowledge which has seen seed gene banks swallowed up by unaccountable research bodies and corporations, threatening local livelihoods and cultural ways of life.”

Reference:

Sanjay Suri, “Potato Capital of the World Offers Up New Recipe,” IPS, London, Jan 18, 2005, http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=27068.

For more information:

http://www.potatoperspective.com