Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
period. Sir Francis Drake wrote indistinctly of
potatoes on the island of Chiloé and of potatoes
being grown by escaped slaves in the jungles of
Panama, referring to
Solanum
potato in the for-
mer and
Ipomoea
potato in the latter. The next
period in potato evolution had a major impact
on human nutrition and the global economy.
(New Spain), traveled as the accompanying nat-
uralist on a voyage from San Blas, New Spain
(Mexico). He made an inventory of the plants
and animals around Nootka Sound and included
S. tuberosum
on his list (Swan, 1868; Cook, 1973;
Moziño, 1991).
The Makah have long known they received
their famous Ozette potato from the Spanish
(Swan, 1868; McDonald, 1972; Cook, 1973;
Moziño, 1991; Zhang
et al
., 2010). Documenta-
tion of potatoes in Puget Sound, Washington State,
among native peoples was recorded by several
sources (Swan, 1868; Suttles, 1951; McDonald,
1972; Gill, 1983). Suttles (1951) concluded that
the Coastal Salish Indians obtained potatoes from
the British-owned Hudson Bay Company, while
he noted the Makah Ozette Potato was peculiar
and probably had been obtained earlier from a dif-
ferent source (i.e. Spanish mariners). In south-east
Alaska, Gibson (1999) noted the potatoes grown
by the Haida and Tlingit were cultivated under
contract to supply the Russian sea otter fleets in
the first half of the 19th century.
To the south in California, the potato 'Bodega
Red' was instrumental in feeding the hordes of
gold miners during the California gold rush of the
mid-1800s. This was a potato variety brought
from Chile and cultivated around Bodega Bay,
California (Burbank, 1914; Burke, 2007).
Although the aforementioned varieties are
of eclectic interest as representatives of an alter-
native path of potato germplasm diffusion, they
pose a question regarding the importance of An-
dean and Chilean cultivars as sources. Hosaka
and Hanneman (1988) found, almost without
exception, potatoes now growing in long-day
summer adaptation had a specific deletion in
their chloroplast genome, denoted as T-type
cytoplasm. All of the potatoes collected from the
west coast of North America and south-east
Alaska have T-type cytoplasm, which indicates
some recent ancestry of Chilean potatoes or dir-
ect rendition from Chile itself.
Cultivation of the potato crop
in North America
Barely half a century had passed between the
first European appearance of the potato and the
potato arriving in the newly founded colony of
Virginia, USA. It is remarkable that little mention
of the introduction of South American potato
germplasm to Europe or North America occurred
in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. A partial
explanation is that the Spanish were not inter-
ested in local foods on arriving in the western
hemisphere. Rather, they were intent on recre-
ating Old Spain in New Spain, which meant
searching for environments where wheat could
be grown, and beef cattle and sheep would prosper.
The suitability of cultivating Old World food
was, in fact, one of the criteria for establishing
a town (Reader, 2008).
Another reason behind the secrecy of po-
tato cultivation was competition and fear of war
between England and Spain (Cook, 1973).
Nearly all information gleaned from observers
and chroniclers of the New World was regarded
as a military secret. An important scientific and
economic question, also the subject of constant
conjecture and debate, was the location of the
Northwest Passage (Cook, 1973; Wagner, 2002).
Both the British and Spanish governments lived
in fear the other would find the Northwest Pas-
sage and lay claim to it. As a result, free dissem-
ination of the attributes of the diets, clothing,
and technology of the people of South America
did not occur for many more centuries.
In the course of establishing sovereignty
over crucial latitudes on the west coast of North
America, the Spanish founded forts in modern-
day Canada and the USA. The locations were
predominantly Nootka and Makah native villages
and harbors in Nootka Sound, now known as
Vancouver Island (Canada), and Neah Bay and Cape
Flattery on the north-west tip of Washington
State's Olympic Peninsula. In 1792, a naturalist,
Mariano Moziño, born in modern-day Mexico
The potato in Ireland
After its introduction to Europe through Spain,
the potato was incorporated into the Irish diet,
and by 1790, the Irish were described as having
embraced the tuber completely (Salaman, 1949).
The widespread acceptance of the potato in
Ireland, spurred on by economic repression
