Wednesday, July 25, 2007 A second look at lowly potato By Henrylito D. Tacio
THE Incas survived on it. The Scots banned it on religious grounds. A French queen wore its flowers in her hair. And Peruvians today enjoy 4,000 varieties. Call it the "spud, tater" or just plain old potato (known in the science world as "Solanum tuberosum").
Thousands of years after its emergence on the windswept highlands of South America's Andes, the lowly potato is conquering the world.
"The potato is continuing its march," said an official of the Peruvian-based International Potato Center. "There's just something about potatoes that everyone likes. It goes with anything."
The potato was domesticated in southern Peru and northern Bolivia. In pre-Colombian times, potatoes were also widely cultivated on Chiloe Island in Chile. Potatoes spread from South America to Spain and from there to the rest of the world after European colonization in the late 1400s and early 1500s.
Potatoes soon became an important field crop. Today, potatoes are the world's most widely grown tuber crop. They are also the fourth largest food crop in terms of fresh produce -- after rice, wheat and corn.
In Quechua language, the word for potato is "papa." The English word "potato" comes from Spanish "batata," which actually refers to sweet potato ("Ipomoea batatas").
Sweet potato was introduced in Europe much earlier -- brought from the Caribbean by Christopher Columbus himself.
Though a different plant, in both plants their underground parts are eaten, which led to confusion.
Currently, there are about five thousand potato varieties around the world. Three thousand of them are found in the Andes alone, mainly in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia. They belong to eight or nine species.
Apart from the five thousand cultivated varieties, there are about 200 wild species, many of which can be cross-bred with cultivated species, which has been done repeatedly to transfer resistances to certain pests and diseases from the genepool of wild to the genepool of cultivated potato species.
Although the Spanish most likely brought the potato to the Philippines, the precise date or circumstances of the introduction is unknown.
History records showed that the first mention of the potato in the Philippines was made by the Jesuit naturalist, George Joseph Camel, who lived in the Archipelago in the late 18th Century.
The term "papa" was recorded by him as the word used by Filipinos and Spaniards to designate the crop.
Nutritionally, potatoes are best known for their carbohydrate content (approximately 26 grams in a medium potato). Starch is the predominant form of carbohydrate found in potatoes.
A small but significant portion of the starch in potatoes is resistant to enzymatic digestion in the stomach and small intestine and, thus, reaches the large intestine essentially intact. This resistant starch is considered to have similar physiological effects and health benefits of fiber (examples: provide bulk, offer protection against colon cancer, improve glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity, lower plasma cholesterol and triglyceride concentrations, increase satiety, and possibly even reduce fat storage).
