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Science Reveals the Surprising Origins of the Potato
Potatoes as we know them today are the product of a hybridization that took place 9 million years ago between two plants, one of which was an ancestor of the tomato.
Now, science reveals the vegetable’s surprising origins: It emerged 9 million years ago as a result of an unusual hybridization between an ancestor of the tomato and an ancient South American plant. The finding suggests that potatoes as we know them today arose from a process of hybridization between an ancient tomato plant and other Solanum-related species from the Etuberosum family that, until then, did not produce tubers. During the Miocene, between 10 and 6 million years ago, the abrupt geological uplift of the Andes, driven by the collision of two tectonic plates, generated new cold climatic regions.
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