Origins
Every potato in this cellar descends from potatoes first grown in the Andes.
The potato was domesticated by Andean peoples in the region of Lake Titicaca, in what is now southern Peru and northwestern Bolivia, about 7,000 to 10,000 years ago, from wild relatives that still grow there. The dates are estimates from genetic and archaeological evidence.
The potato's greatest diversity is still in the Andes, and it is still kept there. Andean farmers grow thousands of native varieties. Near Pisac in Cusco, six Quechua communities run the Potato Park together and keep more than 1,300 of them. In 2004 the International Potato Center returned 410 native varieties to the park that had been collected there in the 1960s and lost locally since. Seed from the park now also lies in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, in Norway.
The Mandelpotet, the Kerr's Pink and every other kind in the Tuffelrud cellar came, by long roads, from that origin.
The Empty Bin
At the end of the row of bins in the cellar stands one more: swept, dry and empty, with a label in the keeper's hand. It is kept for the Andean varieties who are not here. The cellar folk lower their voices when they pass it, and nobody tells stories about who should be in it, because those stories are not the cellar's to tell.
The words on the label are not written yet. They wait for a conversation with Andean and Quechua people, and so does any Andean character. Until then the bin stays empty, and this page says where the potato comes from.
For the same reason, the silhouette puzzle leaves out Andean native varieties for now.
Sources
- Wikipedia: Potato: domestication around Lake Titicaca, 7,000 to 10,000 years ago, from wild species of the Solanum brevicaule complex
- Natural History Museum, London (2025): how the potato's wild ancestors evolved
- International Potato Center (CIP): cultivated potato: Andean landraces as the origin and the main diversity of the cultivated potato
- ANDES: the Potato Park: six Quechua communities near Pisac, Cusco, keeping more than 1,300 native varieties
- Cultural Survival: Quechua guardians of the potato: the Potato Park and the communities who run it
- IIED: the return of the potatoes: CIP returning 410 native varieties to the Potato Park in 2004
- IIED: Quechua farmers take their potato seeds to Svalbard: Potato Park seed in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault