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Sweet potato is thought to be native to tropical South America where it has been used as a food source for more than 5000 years. The natives called the plant batatas. This word eventually became patata in Spanish, patae in French and potato in English.
Sweet potatoes have been a part of the diet in the U.S. for most of its history, especially in the Southeast. The average per capita consumption of sweet potatoes in the United States is only about 1.5–2 kg (3.3–4.4 lb) per year, down from 13 kg (29 lb) in 1920.
Did you know that sweet potatoes were cultivated and consumed before the white (Irish) potato? The earliest cultivation records of the sweet potato date to 750 BCE in Peru, although archeological evidence shows cultivation of the sweet potato might have begun around 2500-1850 BCE.
Sweet potatoes originated in Central and South America. But archaeologists have found prehistoric remnants of sweet potato in Polynesia from about A.D. 1000 to A.D....
Sweet potato, food plant of the morning glory family (Convolvulaceae), native to tropical America. The fleshy roots are served as a cooked vegetable, in whole or mashed form, and are used as pie filling. It is unrelated to true yams. Learn more about sweet potatoes in this article.
The sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) is a root crop, probably first domesticated somewhere between the Orinoco river in Venezuela north to the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. The oldest sweet potato discovered to date was in the Tres Ventanas cave in the Chilca Canyon region of Peru, ca. 8000 BCE, but it is believed to have been a wild form.
By the time Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World in the late 15 th century, sweet potatoes were well established as food plants in South and Central America. Columbus brought sweet potatoes back to Spain, introducing them to the taste buds and gardens of Europe.
Learn the history of the sweet potato, an amazingly nutritious tuber which has migrated long distances at least twice. How did it evolve to today's crop?
The sweet potato is considered to originate in the New World, although its precise origin is not well defined. Archaeological remains of the storage roots, or tubers, of sweet potato show it was long used as a food source by the inhabitants of Peru.
Indigenous people of Central and South America grew it on farms for generations, and Europeans discovered it when Christopher Columbus arrived in the Caribbean. In the 18th century, however,...