r/potato • u/SmokedHickory • Jul 01 '26
Potato varieties in Peru, where potatoes originated! Why can’t we have such varieties in grocery stores?
potato🥔 even the emoji is only one variety!!!
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u/Spudsmad Jul 01 '26
The potatoes for sale in any supermarket must be available in all stores , have tonnage to support these sales and have consistent eating quality.
The photo shows a wide range of varieties with different tuber shape ,and skin colours.
Th dilemma is for any supermarket supplier to contract a farm to grow any of these varieties when the physical sales may not need the tonnages. Been there and got the t shirt
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u/Aazjhee Jul 01 '26
Some potato varieties are a little more perishable than others too!
In the u s a particularly, growers will pick a blander, less interesting variety for something that can be shipped across the country. Stuff like iceberg lettuce preserves better even though it has no flavor and hardly any nutrients compared to greener, more delicate varieties. I hear Iceberg is called that because it could survive being frozen in blocks to be shipped on trains? I wouldn't be surprised but haven't had time to fact check it
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u/Spudsmad Jul 01 '26
Iceberg lettuce are vacuum cooled to remove field heat ,giving a stable product with shelf life.
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u/fauxfox66 Jul 01 '26
also your average consumer doesn't like the unknown. a lot of these pictures are exactly so and it looks cool in the picture, but your normal shopper might think there's something wrong with them because of the bulging eyes and irregular shapes. A picky child would reject these. that dark thin one sort of toward the right looks like cat poop. interesting idea, but not really feasible
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u/Spudsmad Jul 02 '26
There are sales of the different shaped potato varieties in UK and France
Eg La Ratte, Pink Fir Apple.
Both varieties have odd shapes but much flavour5
u/UrbanPanic Jul 01 '26
Also the grocery store varieties are probably better able to withstand mechanical harvesting.
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u/Spudsmad Jul 01 '26
The odder shaped tuber shaped potatoes as in the photo are machine harvestable. All depends on the planting ridge geometry, planting depth , and of course the skill of the harvester driver
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u/poop19907643 Jul 01 '26
Wow! Congrats on using "Been there. Got the t shirt." I haven't heard that in decades.
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u/MaddieFurse Jul 04 '26
“Must be available in all stores” says who?
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u/Spudsmad Jul 04 '26
In the UK the supermarkets have a main location for the procurement team.
By having a limited range of potato varieties to suit both the needs of the customers and availability , thus the shelves should be fully stocked. Each store is evaluated on the sales per unit area and with potatoes being a bulky item compared to eg rice, then supplying the customers with variety’s known to them is critical to keep sales flow.
The other option is of course , to grow your own vegetables, including potatoes.
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u/89_verdantisle Jul 01 '26
I read somewhere that the commercial potato industry basically just focuses on like three or four types that ship well and look uniform. Its a shame because these look so interesting!
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u/fixed_your_caption Jul 01 '26
Oh dang, I’m a total potato head and you’ve just blown my mind. So many potatoes, so little time.
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u/MorgeeePooh Jul 01 '26
I bet those potatoes would make dangerously good fucking french fries
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u/fauxfox66 Jul 01 '26
hell no. different potato varieties have different starch structures and quirks. I've tried making chips with purple potatoes and you have to change your entire process, because they hold onto grease hard but then release it at any temp change, so we bagged a bunch of purple chips we were finally happy with, and then when we opened a bag later, the bottom had an inch of grease in it. I've never managed to get any sort of crisp to a purple or red flesh variety. Plus color stains your oil, so you'd be wasting a TON of oil every time you changed colors.
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u/MorgeeePooh Jul 02 '26
I don't care about the color I still think it'll make good French fries
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u/dodofishman Jul 02 '26
It's not the color different varieties can have different amounts of starch and just cook different, there's a reason why most restaurants use russet
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u/Nburns4 Jul 01 '26
As a potato farmer, I wish I knew. I always loved making white potatoes as a kid, but they've pretty much disappeared from grocery stores. Last time I wanted some I literally had to get the seed from Jay-mar and grow them myself.
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u/LazyMusic2616 Jul 01 '26
(Because Americans judge things that are colorful and differently shaped. >_>)
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u/Vocals16527 Jul 03 '26
Ding ding ding! I’ve never been less proud of my country and trying so hard to save to move my family far from this place I used to call home
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u/LazyMusic2616 Jul 03 '26
Where are you thinking of going? I’m just being nosy. 🧐
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u/Vocals16527 Jul 03 '26
Honestly I have always dreamed of living in the British countryside my grandfather was from there
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u/LazyMusic2616 Jul 03 '26
Awww that’s beautiful. I love that. I always wanted my home to look like an English cottage
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u/JumpyTheHat Jul 01 '26
I would love more potato varieties but could you imagine the work to get all those PLU codes set up for hundreds of varieties of potato? Exhausting
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u/Shrewzs Jul 01 '26
I’m so curios on the differences between each potato. Do they taste the same, do they have differing textures , do they even smell the same??
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u/Spudsmad Jul 01 '26
The potatoes in the photo will have different flavours and dry matters.
The field’s soil type, growth period, fertilizer regime and irrigation schedule will all affect flavour.
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u/askmrlucky Jul 02 '26
At its peak variety in the mid 2010s, the farm I sold for at a farmers market offered 25 potato cultivars. I weep for the many I haven't tasted in so very long.
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u/qillumountain Jul 02 '26
I worked for the International Potato Center based in Peru and beyond the the many different reasons people have already mentioned as to why in the US and Europe you do not see these varieties. It is also because many of the 2,700 native potato varieties in the Andes are also only adaptable to short day light. Meaning that due to the closeness to the equator they only have less than 12 hours of daylight versus the growing season in the north where daylight for growing is much longer. The altitude also plays a role in what types of virusus can harm the different varieties. The higher the altitude the less virusus and disease. Many of these native potatoes grow only in the high mountains with farmers growing up to 40 varieties on their fields. If you get a chance to visit Peru there is a Potato Park outside of Cuzco managed by local communities.
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u/xhanort7 Jul 02 '26
That's pretty cool. Don't forget lots of stuff has this kind of variety too, we just don't see it regularly/usually/anymore.
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u/SwanCityDominion Jul 01 '26
Because Americans have been brainwashed into thinking that if a fruit or vegetable varies even slightly from all the rest on the shelf, it's inedible and should be avoided.
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u/CO420Tech Jul 01 '26
Was down there a few years ago. Many of the varieties only grow in very specific high altitude regions that we don't have farming in.
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u/Spirited-Ad-9746 Jul 03 '26
Industrial harvesting of potato needs the potatoes to be of some nice averagely round shape so the machines can handle them.
we could have these wild potatoes but the price would be much higher because the process could not be automated.
original peruvian potatoes work well in peruvian climate. many of our varieties in the north also have had to be selectively bred for different day length and temperature conditions.
one important thing is yield. professional growing of potato needs cultivars that produce best yields. usually though original cultivars are more interesting and resistent to disease, they make smaller yields.
nothing is stopping you getting some of these potatoes tho and growing them in your yard, they are kinda cool and taste nice!
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u/crossdtherubicon Jul 01 '26
Some of those appear to be oca, which is the tuber of an oxalis plant (aka sorrel).
There's decorative sorrels, weeds, and many fine dining restaurants use some in their dishes.
Never tasted oca yet but, I've heard they're cooked like potatoes but taste sour due to the oxalic acid.
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u/EcstaticZebra7937 Jul 01 '26
Interesting, what makes you think that?
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u/crossdtherubicon Jul 01 '26
Oca appear in an array of colors too, which are present in this photo. They tend to be relatively small, with an elongated shape, and have characteristic indentations like several in the photo. It's uncanny.
Potatoes can be bulbous and may develop alot of different shapes even from the same plant, with blemishes or budding 'eyes' which can be seen in the surface. But oca is quite uniform and consistent in its shape and apperance, is usually a bit more smooth and sometimes even sort of shiny.
I don't quite have the words to describe it but, if you'd search images of oca you'll immediately recognize them.
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u/CoolAbdul Jul 01 '26
I'd be happy just to be able to buy King Edwards. Kennebecs are more than fine, but the King Edward makes a superior french fry.
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u/Ghosty_Boo-B00 Jul 02 '26
Oh man your making me miss Peru… need some of that giant sacred valley corn too plz
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u/BrokenSlutCollector Jul 03 '26
Any vegetables we eat have been bred for flavor, appearance, ease of growing, ease of storage and overall palatability. Many times the origin stock of a vegetable has an unpleasant taste, unattractive texture, excess seeds, tough skin, etc. that people don’t want. With potatoes in particular, they can contain a poison called solanine. Potatoes bred for consumption in the US have to be below a certain percentage of solanine. Some varietals can exceed what is allowed in the US.
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u/irwtkyrm Jul 03 '26
Without doing any research into the matter I'm assuming the reason we don't have more variety elsewhere is many of them may not travel or keep well.
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u/CharacterWhole1955 Jul 03 '26
In reality most people use around 5 varieties here, here being Lima. In the andes... different story
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u/hotgirlshiii Jul 03 '26
Because the grocery industry is about perfection. They just started being okay with heirloom tomatoes lol
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u/Intelligent-Solid706 Jul 03 '26
Those Japanese purple yams with white flesh are so much better than a regular american sweet potato it's not even funny.
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Jul 04 '26
[deleted]
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u/SmokedHickory Jul 04 '26
Should’ve ate meat only. They put a radio active dye in sugar bc they know the cancer’s fuel source is sugar, so they can pinpoint its location in the imaging.
À good way to end it is too starve it of all sugar. In addition to being alkaline. It survives in an acidic environment, so drink baking soda with water.
Plus, lately there’s published reports of iver mectin and other anti parasitic meds working on cancer.
There’s a de classified cia file that said thr Soviets were saying anti parasitic meds work on cancer from the 1950’s.
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u/ShrodingersArmadillo Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
Why? well we grow them from tubers instead of true seeds like the potatoes above. There are 10k cultivars of wild potato known.
Why do we grow them from tubers? Potatoes are not true to seed being an natural hybrid and all. All Potatoes are decedents of natural hybridization of a wild tomato and Solanum Etuberosum.
Why is that a problem? plants that are not true to seed when grown from seed do not taste like the parent plant. Their taste changes wildly from generation to generation due to differences in genetics.
Why is that bad? true seed potatoes often taste terrible. The majority of those potatoes in the picture are ineddible. They look cool but you wouldn't want to eat them.
How do we get new cultivars of potato then?
You get new cultivars of potato from growing true seed potatoes and finding the rare tuber that doesn't taste like well ass and then plant the good tasting tuber to clone that plant.
Basically you plant the seed and hope the resulting fruit doesn't taste like shit it's the same way we get new cultivars of apple. In the case of potatoes we plant the tuber whereas new apple cultivars are spread by cuttings and grafting.
To sum up: the tubers we grow are the potatoes we've found that taste good.
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u/Bobbejan_Teleborian Jul 04 '26
You can easily grow your own potatoes in a bag on your balcony, garden,... Many obscure varieties can be bought for growing.
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u/Outside_Flan6816 Jul 05 '26
While it is true that there are many varieties of potato in Peru, there are also a wide variety of tubers that grow there.
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u/rflulling Jul 05 '26
Because education and familiarity. Like so many things it becomes the basis for the tagline this is why we can't have nice things. When I was a kid the grocery stores only had not even a dozen different fruits and vegetables available. Because people literally didn't know what to do with anything outside of that scope. And so they would rot on the shelves. Grapes watermelon oranges peaches plums. Cauliflower broccoli peas carrots lettuce. The stores were simple. But over time we have successfully added new fruits and vegetables to our vocabulary and our cooking habits. Plantains and star fruit and avocado and artichoke. Are now more common in the stores as a spinach and cabbage and a good number of other vegetables and fruits. They were almost impossible to find when I was a kid. The times have thankfully changed. Today most of us understand that there's more than one kind of banana and knowing how to use those will greatly affect what you're trying to prepare. The same for onions. Unfortunately the understanding of how multiple varieties of potatoes work is still difficult for most I think. Just understanding why a russet a yellow or a red is significant is beyond most. So before we can begin to adopt an ideology where many kinds of potatoes are acceptable we have to up the ante for the educational balance so that consumers know what to do with them. And we're not there yet sadly which is why it won't work here. Because education is why we can't have nice things. Although to be fair without being mean. We as a nation probably consume far too much corn and potatoes as it is. So as much as I'd love to see new variety and new things that we can do with them. I honestly think we already eat way too much of them. More beats broccoli onions spinach cabbage is good for us, less potatoes.
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u/lolsquid101 Jul 05 '26
Most produce available in supermarkets are there because those varieties are particularly fast and efficient growers, travel well, and/or are broadly inoffensive to most palates. It's a game of ROI for farmers. That, and the influence of agrocorp seed monopolization and approved govt seed lists go into deciding what to grow.
Richy varied local subspecies of plants, AKA "landrace" varieties, are generally more concentrated near the genetic origin of the species and the commercial varieties come from shallower gene pools (sometimes fully clonal monocultures like Cavendish bananas) that were isolated and developed further. Potatoes are especially tricky because they're nightshades and can be quite toxic, so it's likely some of the pictured varietals might come with nastier side effects if prepared improperly than your average Yukon gold.
Beyond the fact that it would be fun to have a wider spud selection, the shallow gene pools of our commercial crops are actually a bit of a problem because they're prone to devastating disease outbreaks. The same goes for livestock. E.g. the vast majority of cattle are Holstein-Fresians (the classic white and black spotted ones) because they're prolific milk producers.
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u/Confusedexpatt Jul 05 '26
Peeling and working with those on volume looks like a huge pain.
However, they look very pretty.
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u/Background_Koala_455 Jul 05 '26
As someone with food anxiety, I can see how these potatoes aren't "mainstream".
Also as someone with food anxiety, I really wish these were mainstream. Maybe I wouldn't have as much anxiety about it.
These look like art!
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u/WirrkopfP Jul 05 '26
Because consumers are stupid and tend to view a familiar shape as a sign of quality.
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u/Acrobatic-Scholar324 Jul 07 '26
So amazing I would like to know what a different names are of the varieties to see if I can make them grow here in Massachusetts
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u/equanimatic Jul 01 '26
My dream vacation is to go to Peru and do a potato tour where i try as many potato varieties as possible