The cultivated potato is presently the world’s 3rd essential staple crop, and with wheat, rice, and maize, is accountable for 80% of human calorie consumption.

In look, contemporary potato plants are practically similar to 3 potato-like types from Chile called Etuberosum. These plants do not bring bulbs.

Based upon phylogenetic analysis, potato plants are more carefully associated to tomatoes.

To resolve this contradiction, Dr. Sanwen Huang from the Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences and associates evaluated 450 genomes from cultivated potatoes and 56 of the wild potato types.

“Our findings demonstrate how a hybridization occasion in between types can trigger the advancement of brand-new qualities, permitting a lot more types to emerge,” Dr. Huang stated.

“We’ve lastly fixed the secret of where potatoes originated from.”

“Wild potatoes are extremely challenging to sample, so this dataset represents the most extensive collection of wild potato genomic information ever evaluated,” stated Dr. Zhiyang Zhang, a scientist at the Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

The authors discovered that every potato types consisted of a steady, well balanced mix of hereditary product from both Etuberosum and tomato plants, recommending that potatoes stemmed from an ancient hybridization in between the 2.

While Etuberosum and tomatoes stand out types, they shared a typical forefather about 14 million years back.

Even after diverging for about 5 million years, they had the ability to interbreed and generated the earliest potato plants with bulbs around 8-9 million years back.

The scientists likewise traced the origins of the potato’s essential tuber-forming genes, which are a mix of hereditary product from each moms and dad.

They discovered the SP6A gene, which imitates a master switch that informs the plant when to begin making roots, originated from the tomato side of the household.

Another essential gene called IT1which assists control development of the underground stems that type roots, originated from the Etuberosum side.

Without either piece, the hybrid offspring would be incapable of producing roots.

This evolutionary development accompanied the fast uplift of the Andes Mountains, a duration when brand-new eco-friendly environments were emerging.

With a bulb to keep nutrients underground, early potatoes had the ability to rapidly adjust to the altering environment, making it through extreme weather condition in the mountains.

Roots likewise permit potato plants to recreate without seeds or pollination. They grow brand-new plants by just growing from buds on the root.

This quality enabled them to quickly broaden and fill varied eco-friendly specific niches from moderate meadows to high and cold alpine meadows in Central and South America.

“Evolving a bulb provided potatoes a big benefit in extreme environments, sustaining a surge of brand-new types and adding to the abundant variety of potatoes we see and depend on today,” Dr. Huang stated.

The research study was released on July 31, 2025 in the journal Cell

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Zhiyang Zhang et alAncient hybridization underlies tuberization and radiation of the potato family tree. Cellreleased online July 31, 2025; doi: 10.1016/ j.cell.2025.06.034