POTATO IMPROVEMENT IN THE ASIAN AND PACIFIC REGION

This paper is intended to outline the spread of the use of the potato (Solanum tuberosum) from its home in the Andes of South America, across latitudes and longitudes, to most ecologies in which man cultivates plants today.

By an accident of history, its rapid development has been mainly in temperate countries of the northern hemisphere, and this in the space of only 150 years.

Because of its nutritive value and its efficiency in producing food, it has become the fourth crop of world significance in that short time.

Now, the International Potato Center is confident that the potato can be moved back to the tropics from whence it came.
For it is in the tropics and the sub-tropics, particularly from Pakistan to the Asia/ Pacific area where the majority of the world’s hungry people reside.

Symposium on Vegetable growing in the Asian and Pacific Region, XX IHC

L.J. Harmsworth

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1979.101.9