The Mighty Spud - Sandy Knapp, Glenn Bryan and Susan Calman

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Hello, I'm Brian Cox.

And I'm Robert Ince, and this is the Infinite Monkey Cage.

Now, Douglas Adams has been a great influence on many of us.

And in fact, for instance, you'll rarely find Brian without a towel.

He always has a towel, sometimes little more, as subscribers of his OnlyFans site will know.

Quantums, quarks, quips, and sometimes nips.

You didn't go for the obvious pun, then?

No, originally, I was going to say OnlyFan site, where he answers the most difficult questions about physics and it's known as hard cut.

But anyway, so the

art of flying is one of my favorite Douglas Adams philosophy.

The art of flying is throwing yourself to the ground and missing.

The ships hung in the sky in much the same way as bricks don't.

And most importantly, it is a mistake to believe you can solve any problem just with potatoes.

But tonight we're asking, is that really a mistake?

Finally, at episode 204, we deal with the potato.

I mean, more specific, the science of the potato.

Well, no, no, it's going to be there.

We don't.

I suppose that's going to be the sciences.

We've been doing that for ages, haven't we?

But it might get philosophical as well.

You burnt yourself on a chip once, do you remember?

We could talk about that.

That's not philosophical.

Why is it?

It's about your ability to understand the heat death of the universe, but not the speed of the cooling of a chip.

It's actually related because we have to ask yourself the question: what is temperature?

It's a thing you can measure on a thermometer, but that doesn't tell you at a deep level what it is.

You have to know that everything's made of atoms to really know what temperature is.

It's a measure of the speed that things are jiggling around.

The usefulness of it.

I'll stop.

When did we start eating potatoes?

How and where did they evolve?

Is it possible?

And of course, the answer will be yes, to fill an entire episode of the BBC's flagship radio science programme and podcasts with a discussion of the science of the potato.

So, to help us find out, we are joined by a Bannock Russett botanist, a Maris Piper molecular geneticist, and a Jersey Royal Jester.

And they are.

I'm Sandy Knapp.

I'm a botanist from the Natural History Museum.

And my favourite vegetable, besides a potato, of course, could be a tomato, but that's a fruit.

It's the Jerusalem artichoke.

That is the greatest artichoke response that has ever occurred.

I'm Glenn Bryan, and I'm a molecular geneticist.

And for 30 years, I studied potato genetics at the James Hutton Institute in Scotland.

A root vegetable that I'm very fond of is almost as good as the potato, is the parsnip because I'm really fond of a roast parsnip.

I also love my wife's delicious curried parsnip soup.

Not quite up there with artichokes.

Let's see what happens next.

I'm Susan Cowman, and I have absolutely no scientific qualifications to be here at all, but I do love the potato in all of its glorious forms.

My other favourite root vegetable is not as classy as the artichoke.

It is the humble carrot, which I believe is versatile and beautiful, but I will never accept it in a cake.

And this is our panel.

I'd like to ask for a definition, actually, just because you mentioned you can't use tomato because it's a fruit.

So, what's the definition of a vegetable?

A vegetable is something that's not a a fruit.

That doesn't.

Yeah,

not allowed.

Fruits have seeds and vegetables don't.

So, an aubergine has seeds, or it used to before we did things to them to make them not have seeds.

And tomatoes have seeds, but potatoes don't.

So, the aubergine is also a fruit?

Yes.

As is a cucumber and courgettes, but not carrots or parsnips or Jerusalem artichokes.

But real architecto.

I'm enjoying that.

I don't think it's a real architect.

But real artichokes are a flower bud.

I don't even know what she's saying anymore.

Tell us the definition of a potato then, just so we can.

A potato is.

Glenn's probably better at this than I am.

Well, a potato is a growth from an underground root of a plant that's used to store starch.

So potato plants use potatoes to store starch so that they can last through the long, cold winters in the Andes.

So they're really, potatoes are definitely not there for us, but we've really done quite a lot with them.

And technically, the tuber forms on an underground stem.

The main stem of the potato plant grows up and the stolons come off of the stem below the ground and the tubers form at the end of those stolons.

So the stolon is really an underground stem, not strictly a root

roots as well.

When you plant potatoes in plastic bags which is actually the tried and true way to plant potatoes in a small London garden, is you put potatoes in the bottom and you put a bit of soil on and you wait till they come up and then you put more soil on because that makes them make all those things the underground stem.

I chit my potatoes and I take my chitting very seriously and I'm saying the word chit by the way before anyone writes very very good.

I chip my potatoes in old egg boxes until they're ready to put in.

Chiting is because well chitting is the process but listen to me.

So you chip them so they're ready to plant because when you when you buy the potatoes if you're going to grow your own potatoes you don't just put the potatoes in the ground you have to let them you know chit

and so if you put them in egg cups it's perfect and then all the things I mean, I'm surmising what he's about to say more until the bits come out,

and then when the bits come out, they're ready to go in, and you put the earth

and then

eventually, when you take it all out, there's more potatoes.

Just one more clarification because, Glenn, you said something that you said it's not technically a root.

Which so the question is, what is the difference between a stem and a root?

How is the potato not technically on?

Because it looks like it's on a root, doesn't it?

But isn't you saying it's not a root?

It's different from, say, a sweet potato.

A sweet potato is also a tuba, but it forms on a root.

It's part of the root.

You know, the root swells and forms a sweet potato.

But with a potato, they have roots, which are like normal roots, and they have these underground stolons which come off of the main stem, and they're like a rhizome.

And then at the end of those stolons, the tubers you know, they swell and then the tubers form.

So they're separate from the roots.

So a stolon is an underground stem?

It's an underground stem, and it usually runs kind of parallel to the substrate, you know, so it grows kind of outwards just under the ground.

And they will come out of the ground sometimes.

If you put them in pots, for example, the stolons will wander, so they'll come out of the pot and then they will start to grow a new plant.

So that instead of growing a tuba, they'll grow a new plant once they get into the light.

And they will wander into the next pot.

So you have to be very careful when you're growing potatoes for research that you don't get these wandering stolons because you might end up with tubers in the next pot that come from the pot next.

But what's great is you can have wandering stolons in the garden.

Susan, do you have wandering stolons?

But you can also cut through.

Yes, cut through the stems and the roots, and they look different.

So it's great.

What I love is, I thought, I wonder if we'll be able to fill 43 minutes with this.

I'm wondering if we'll even get to the potato out of the ground.

I mean, did you see that?

Well, out of the egg box.

And also, the roots have very specific functions.

You know, they absorb all the nutrients and the water out of the soil, whereas the stolons don't really do that.

although they do have small roots of their own.

So, the stolons will form little small roots.

This is complicated, yeah.

It is quite complicated.

You thought physics was hard.

Well, no, you didn't.

Well, I did.

The first question we had written down here, we should get to the first.

No, no, let's not worry about things like that.

I want to know from you, because you said 30 years, you know, you've been studying the genetics of the potato.

When you first started that,

did you think you would be doing it for three decades?

I mean, what was your when you first approached the subject?

Well, I'd worked on wheat wheat for a while, a place called the John Innes Centre in Norwich, and I'd heard that there was going to be a permanent position coming up in Scotland to do genetics on crops.

And then when I saw that it was a potato job, I was kind of crestfallen.

Potato genetics is notoriously complicated because cultivated potatoes, the potatoes we buy, are tetraploid, so they have four sets of chromosomes instead of two, like we do.

Now, we have two of each chromosome, and potatoes have four.

and that makes doing genetics very complicated.

Breeding is much more complicated for potatoes, so it takes longer to breed a new potato variety than it does to breed, say, a variety of wheat or rice.

Is that uncommon to have the four sets of chromosomes?

It's not that uncommon, no.

I mean, you tend to get bigger, more vigorous plants when they're polyploid, but it does make the genetics much more complicated.

So, no, I didn't think I'd be doing it for 30 years because I thought, you know, I'm going to do this for a few years and see how it goes.

But then it just got

kind of a vocation working on potatoes.

Well, so they draw you in, potatoes.

It draws you in, yeah, and it's really interesting.

And the history of potatoes is very interesting, and it's a real challenge to do potato genetics.

And also, the advances in the last sort of 15 years in genomics, you know, sequencing and all that sort of thing, has actually made the genetics much easier than it used to be.

You know, so it's possible to do things now that you could not think about doing 20 years ago.

Before I ask what those things are,

Sandy, you want us to come in on that?

I think we think of potatoes as being quite variable, right?

There's red ones and white ones and little pink fur apples and stuff.

But those are all the same species.

Those are all the species that's called Selenum tuberosum.

They're the common cultivated potato.

But there are 104 wild species of potatoes which grow in the Andes.

So the diversity of potatoes is enormous.

And it's exciting.

And that's the kind of potato work that I do, is collecting things in the field and looking at wild species.

And they do their tubers in lots of different ways.

They have some of them are like little pearls on a string.

There are all kinds of variations.

So when we think of the potatoes that most of us would be eating,

what percentage of that, if we go to the supermarket and there's normally, what, I don't know, six, seven, eight different kinds of forms of potato to buy sometimes, how much of that is a percentage in terms of representative of

it's one species.

Just one species.

One of 104.

In the Andes, there's three other potatoes which are cultivated.

They're cultivated way high up in very high elevations, and they're used to make freeze-dried potatoes, which are called chuno.

What you do to make cunyo is you put straw on the ground.

You can do this at home.

You put straw on the ground.

You leave the potatoes out overnight.

They freeze.

And then the next morning you tread on them and make all the water come out.

And you do that several nights in a row, and you end up with chunyo, which looks like this.

And is it right you said they're disgusting?

They're not.

Well, they're not disgusting.

They're an acquired taste, Robin.

Right.

It looks like a pebble.

The chunyo looks like little brown pebbles, and that you use in stews and stuff.

And then this white one, this is a white one, which looks like a bit of chalk.

It's called tunta, and it's made in Bolivia, and they basically just wipe the skin off.

But it's very light.

Looks like a piece of styrofoam.

Do you want to try one?

Yeah.

Okay, here, you can have this one, Robin.

Here we go.

I'd love to try some.

What's going to ha happen when

you will get polyploidal before you know it.

I mean, there's been a lot of discussion about chromosomes and genetic stuff, so I'm just slightly concerned as to what's going on.

But it's very, very difficult and incredibly hard, Susan.

It's very hard.

Yeah, it's very hard.

It's potato.

It's not that dissimilar to Edinburgh rock, as if Edinburgh Rock wasn't made of anything.

Don't you start robbing it?

So the thing is that you're supposed to cook it.

Oh, right.

Well, we look like a couple of fools now.

It's fascinating.

Yeah, you're right.

As you said, the kind of polystyrene quality, the kind of, you know, again, literally everything that we think of in terms of the moisture of, you know, the love when you have a lovely baked potato or mashed potato, this is like removing everything.

Because that's the other thing.

Now that we've got this weird thing, can you explain something to me?

Which is why, when we used to have mashed potato at school, was it hairy?

That's about the cooking of the potato because I want, because there's the starchiness of the potato, which is part of the joy, yet part of the danger.

My wife is very much in charge of the soup in the house.

I don't know if you've got a similar thing.

She does the soup, I don't do the soup because I can't do the soup.

Soup, whilst a simple thing, can be easily ruined.

But for some reason, I don't know what has happened to me.

I thought, I'll do the soup.

You know, you just, when you get to a certain age, you just lose your mind a bit.

So I thought, I'll make potato and leek soup, which I don't know where that came from because I don't like it.

But you like potatoes.

You like potatoes.

I like potatoes.

That's the thing because I I love potatoes.

And I thought, well, I'll make potato and leek soup because the point of potatoes, the reason I love potatoes, is they're omnipresent and they fill you up and they're cheap and they're affordable and they're brilliant.

And as far back as I can remember, potatoes were with every single meal.

And when I was at university, I lived on an entirely potato-based diet.

So I made this potato and leek soup.

I mean, you could have papered the house with this.

It was the most disgusting.

And I remember my better half sitting there, you know, that where you have to go, mmm, this is lovely.

You've got to make it with the right kind of potatoes.

So they kind of come in two species.

You said they were all the same potatoes.

They are all the same.

They are all the same.

They're all the same species.

But what people do to their crops is we modify them.

This was the kind of whole point of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species.

He started out with how people modify domesticated animals.

And what we do is we change them to suit our purposes.

And so in the Andes, I mean, we have maybe six or eight, well, actually, my supermarket only has four kinds of potatoes.

But in the Andes, I once met a man who had a rug about the size that this is in front of us, so maybe kind of three meters by three meters.

And he and his wife had more than a thousand different kinds of potatoes on this rug.

And I asked him what they were called, and he started reeling off names, you know, this one and this one and this one.

And they all had a different name, and they all have different uses.

So there's potatoes to make soup with, there's potatoes to make chunyo and tunta out of, there's potatoes to roast, there's potatoes to and it kind of depends on whether they're starchy, you know, like

very starchy potatoes.

The ones that kind of explode when you roast them and you put a knife in them and they go poof.

Or there's the waxy ones which turn into kind of wallpaper paste if you try to make soup that.

That might have been what happened.

You get very high dry matter potatoes which are, you know, have a lot of starch and they're used for more for like baking and roasting and then you get your salad potatoes and they tend to have a particular type of starch called amylopectin you know so the salad potatoes have more water in them and less starch overall but the starch tends to be a starch called amylopectin whereas the other ones have amylopectin and amylose so what is the history so you mentioned the Andes so these are native to South America.

They're native to South America and there's the great myth that Walter Raleigh brought the potato to England which is of course totally false.

It was the Spanish.

But what was amazing is potatoes when they first came to Europe, didn't tuberize properly.

Because in the Andes, where it's near the equator, the days and the nights are the same length all year long.

Whereas here in the northern hemisphere, we have very long days in the summer and very short days in the winter.

And potatoes...

don't tuberize well in long days.

So when they've, the very first drawings of potatoes from Europe had these little teeny weeny tubers.

They looked pathetic, little P-shaped things.

And very soon after coming to Europe, a mutation occurred that allowed them to tuberize in our long day growing environment.

As you described it, so you said that there were hundreds of different potatoes in

this village that you found and this couple selling them.

So does that imply that they were there's quite a sophisticated cuisine around them in the Andes?

Very sophisticated.

An incredibly sophisticated knowledge of the different varieties of potatoes and what you use them for and how to propagate them and what climates to grow them in.

Potato agriculture is very, very sophisticated in the Andes.

And one of the sad things is that a lot of times, which is true with indigenous crops, is that as mechanized agriculture comes and improved crop varieties come, the indigenous varieties, which are perhaps not as disease resistant or don't have as high a yield, they disappear.

And it's like a species disappearing, it's like a language disappearing, it's part of the culture disappearing.

And they're incredible names as well, very descriptive names of potatoes in the Andes.

My favorite one is called Kakchun Wataki, and it means potato that makes the young bride weep.

And basically, this potato looks like a grenade.

You know a grenade, but with really big bubbles on it.

And so your test before you got married was you were supposed to peel the potato without wasting anything.

So I would have never ended up married in the Andes because I would have just cut all those bubbles off.

This is genuinely mind-blowing because

potatoes have been such a part of my life for such a long period of time.

And I had no idea any of the things that you were saying to me, either of you, regarding the species, how many of them there were.

It's in a way, I take them for, I think we take them for granted because they are so important

and they're always there.

I actually become quite upset if there aren't potatoes in the house.

Because you know, when you've got a potato in the house, you know, you can always have something to eat.

If there's a potato in the house, you can always eat something with it.

And because they're just so important to us.

But when you talk about it, it's really quite poignant talking about losing a species of the potato, is like losing a language.

But sitting and going to a supermarket in Glasgow, I don't even know anything about this.

It's been this is jet.

When you said come and talk about potatoes, I thought, well, all right, then, but this is completely unexpected.

They are wonderful.

they are wonderful.

People in the supermarket in Glasgow who go, I can't get to the potatoes, there's some bloody woman who won't get out of the way, and she's just talking and talking about them.

Sorry, before I get away from the cat,

and it's wonderful, and you and you do see variety.

So, next time you go to the supermarket, have a look at the potatoes.

Sorry, I don't mean to pardon me.

So, when I go to the supermarket and I'm in front of the potato section, speak to them.

Tell me what I should be, because I want to appreciate the potatoes now.

This is changing me as a person.

And I want to go to my local supermarket and I want to appreciate them.

How do I appreciate a potato more than I'm currently appreciating potatoes?

Well, think about the difference in the colour of the skin and the colour of the flesh and the deepness of the eyes.

And there's a wonderful thing in London.

It's so romantic.

It is romantic.

But there's a wonderful thing.

On the third Sunday in January, there's a South London potato fair and potato potato fanciers from all over the south of England come and exchange potato varieties.

And you can get some really interesting potatoes.

Ones that cook blue or purple, ones that cook bright red.

They're fantastic.

I'm just wondering about becoming a potato fancier at my time of life.

I think it's probably right.

Many of those interesting coloured ones come from Scotland.

You know, there's things like Shetland Blue and Cotton.

I've used a blue potato before.

There's quite a few varieties that were bred in Scotland that have these nice colours.

So can we, we, as you can with an animal, for example, can we trace the genetics back?

Can we see from

what the species, the initial species was from which all this diversity?

Yeah, we published some work some years ago using molecular data showing that the main sort of domestication event happened about eight to ten thousand years ago somewhere near Lake Titicaca, you know,

southern Peru, northern Bolivia.

But you know, that's been challenged quite a few times by other people.

And there was originally a group of species, about thirty species, the Brevicale group, which I think has been collapsed down now to just a couple.

So the idea was it was domesticated from that group of wild species.

It related to the nightshade.

So the indigenous species here related to them?

They are related.

They're like distant cousins.

So we don't have any native potatoes, although there are lots of kinds of potatoes in Scotland.

But we have no native potatoes.

In Europe, the only native potatoes are found from the southern United States down through Mexico into the Andes, into Brazil.

So they're only in the Americas.

So what is this relationship to things like the nightshade family, which you find here?

When did that split away?

Are we talking about hundreds of thousands of years ago?

Millions of years.

So 20 million, maybe?

But now we're revising all those dates because we've just submitted.

So everybody, cross your fingers that this paper will get accepted.

We're just describing a whole bunch of new seed fossils of selenum, of solanaceae, of nightshades, which are from various parts of Europe and also from the United States.

Seed fossils.

That's fascinating.

I've never thought of seed fossils really before.

Well, you get, I mean, they're quite hard seeds, really, and they fossilize quite well.

So we're revising the dates of when all of this happened.

Watch that space.

So we could have a kind of Jurassic park that's more potato-based eventually.

That is so.

Oh, we could.

We could.

But the interesting thing is that the nightshades, the genus to which the potato belongs, the plants don't all look like potatoes.

They're extraordinarily different.

There are huge, spiny trees and tiny plants about this big that grow way high up in the Andes.

So they're hugely diverse.

Potatoes are just one part of the family tree.

I always get the terminology wrong.

What is it?

The genus?

What is the...

Solanum.

Or Solanum.

It comes from...

Well, nobody knows where it comes from.

But we can make it up.

I've made it up many times.

That's fantastic.

The way that you very confidently went, it comes from...

No, no one knows.

But

why do we end up though, as we keep saying about the fact that we've only got one species?

Why is it remaining?

I mean, at one point there were more cultivated species, but they've been reduced in number, you know, to four species.

So would we have seen,

if we went back even a few hundred years, would we have seen that some of the potatoes that were coming over here, some of the potatoes that were being eaten, some of the potatoes that are there,

or we basically were still talking about that one species?

No, that one species is the one that was brought to Europe.

Just like, like, can I just ask a question?

Again, I'm in the supermarket.

You're saying that there is

one species of potato.

Yep.

But they're all called different things because you've got your mouse pipers and you've got all the other ones.

They're different varieties.

For example, breeders.

So they're different varieties of the same species by breeders and then they get a name.

People made them.

They become a variety.

But they're the same species.

So genetically, they're all the same yeah kind of i mean we're genetically not all the same right and we're all the same species so it's like dogs really yeah yeah

i think potatoes and and humans in some ways are quite similar because um

this is when there's going to be a twist now twist

because you know most crops like seed crop most seed crops are inbreeders you know like wheat rice barley you know these crops they're they're they're what we call homozygous genetically so if you grow a wheat plant and click the seeds and grow them up they'll all be the same as the plant that you got them from.

If you take a potato plant, in fact, that's how early potato breeding worked, because they didn't have the ability to cross one variety with another the way that normal breeding works.

They just collected seeds from a potato plant, and because it's highly heterozygous and tetraploid, all the seeds are completely different from the original plant that you got them from.

So, and then what they would do is they'd grow them up and see what the tubers look like and said, oh, this one looks nice.

We'll call this Victoria.

There was one called Patterson's Victoria in Scotland.

And we like the look of this particular tuba, and then that became a variety.

But then from that point on, if you want to keep that variety, you have to grow it as tubers.

You can't propagate it via seed.

You have to propagate it vegetatively, which makes what Sandy said about all these hundreds of varieties in South America so amazing because they have been propagated as tubers for hundreds or even thousands of years.

And as soon as you lose one, it's gone, you know, because it's genetically unique.

So, genetically, there's so much diversity there, but it doesn't help.

If you grow them by pollination,

then what you get is not predictable, right?

You're shuffling the deck every time.

It is a big deck in this case.

It's a big deck, yeah, a very big deck.

So, potatoes are like humans.

No, no, I didn't, I didn't.

No, I'm still trying to, I'm still trying to, I'm not, I'm not holding teachers at all.

I'm still trying to understand

this.

I'm so sorry, you asked me to come on.

No, I love this.

I thought,

my whole life's been a lie.

I genuinely feel like crying.

I thought when I went into the supermarket and I was choosing different potatoes, I was being fancy.

Do you know what I mean?

When you go, oh, I've got these fancy potatoes, but they're all just potatoes.

I know, but they are fancy, Susan, because they are fancy because

they're different.

I feel like one sense is a breakdown and you're just being nice.

So what you're saying is they're clones, basically.

So the different varieties of potatoes are different.

That's why if you ever want to see potato fruits, which who's seen a potato fruit?

Anybody seen a potato fruit?

Nope.

You have to grow two different varieties and then they'll cross-pollinate and make a fruit.

They look like sort of ugly brownish-green tomatoes.

Hi, I'm Erica Cruz-Guevara, host of KQED's podcast, The Bay.

When something important is happening in the Bay Area, I want to know what it actually means for the people who live here.

In every episode of The Bay, we ask deeper questions, cut through the noise, and keep you connected to the community that you and I love.

Find new episodes of KQED's The Bay every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, wherever you get your podcasts.

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The big question I want to ask you, Glenn, is why do potatoes explode less than they used to?

Because I think in the old, you know, that bit of getting the fork and making sure it won't explode, and the two things I think now with the contemporary potato, as I see it, you don't find any for Melbourne Bragg's job.

Welcome to the contemporary potato.

I've come up to potato head.

And turn it.

No, because when I was growing up, very often when you had a potato, there would be that nasty little, you know, kind of

the little black kind of eye that would be in it.

And the other one was that I think it is harder to make a potato explode.

And I've been doing a lot of tests.

Maybe you just got better at preparing for microwaving them by sticking them.

Because they're not.

Oh, so there isn't a decline then in the explosive nature of the potato in places.

Not that I've heard of.

I'm a bit worried that you said these nasty little eyes.

Do you mean the eyes on the outside, on the skin?

No, no, I don't know.

I mean the men's sides.

You used to cut them open and did it.

My mum just buy really cheap.

That's a growth defect.

If you grow potatoes and they find, you know, when you're about to sell them to market and they find a lot of hollow heart in the tubers, you can often get a whole field's worth of tubers rejected because of that.

So it's a growth defect.

But that used to be a lot more common, I think, growing up.

So it's not something there's been a lot of work in trying to eliminate hollow heart over the years

by selective breeding.

I'm hearing words like hollow hearts.

I'm hearing about all of these things.

And I grow my own potatoes and I'm very protective of them.

And now I'm concerned because the thing when you grow your own potatoes is you don't know what's happening because you can't check on them all the time, can you?

You can't say, not as like your tomatoes.

But most contemporary potatoes have been bred to not get disease.

I love the phrase contemporary potato.

And actually, another key thing is that, you know, Sandy mentioned the hundred and odd potato species.

Several of those species have been used to improve the disease resistance of Solanum tuberosum, subspecies tuberosum.

So, when, for example, after the famine in Ireland, you know, the late blight epidemic in Ireland in 1845, there were concerted efforts to improve the late blight resistance of potatoes.

And so, people turned to the wild species of potato, which can be crossed to cultivated potato,

especially from places like Mexico, where there were a lot of wild species that were resistant to late blight, and those species were crossed to cultivated potato to bring the genes in that would give you the resistance to the late blight.

This brings us nicely, actually, to the current research and the future.

So, what's the state of the art at the moment?

What are we trying to do to the potential?

What is the state-of-the-art potato at the moment?

What can we imagine for the future of the potato?

Well, exactly.

So, one of the things that, you know, Glenn mentioned that potatoes are tetraploid.

They have four sets of chromosomes, which makes the genetics quite difficult.

So, one of the things that people are trying to do is figure out how to make a diploid potato with only two sets of chromosomes, which makes the genetics much easier.

A lot of Chinese scientists are working on making diploid potatoes.

They just do a lot of really fancy pants genetics.

You know, really, really genome sequencing and figuring out who's related to who and all the different varieties and where bits of wild species have gone in.

What would be the advantage if you could produce such a potato, a diploid potato?

Some of the species that we talked about are diploids and naturally diploids.

And some of the primitive cultivated types of Solanum tuberosum are also diploid.

One that we used to call Solanum foreca,

which is a diploid type of cultivated potato.

And very nice, I should add.

It's probably my favourite potato to eat.

So what's the recommendation?

What's it actually called?

Foreca.

If you went to a supermarket.

If you couldn't get it in a supermarket,

you'd have to talk to somebody in the know to get some.

Potatoes are the potato.

So what's the name we're to ask for?

The Solanum...

It's a variety, so it's a cultivar.

It's a cultivar too.

And it's called foreja.

And it's diploid, and you can't cook it like a normal potato because it falls apart if you boil it for very long.

You have to steam it.

It will explode, yes, exactly.

But in a very kind of squidgy way, not very dramatic.

But it's very, very tasty.

It has a very strong potato flavour.

Suddenly, this salesmanship's falling apart, hasn't it?

It's a very special potato.

It tastes very potato.

It's a special potato than a potato.

But but the idea with diploid breeding, I mean, it it could be a game changer, partly because of this thing that you have to propagate tetraploid potatoes as tubers.

If you could convert potato from a tetraploid tuber propagated crop to a diploid seed propagated crop, that would be a game changer, especially in places where storage of potatoes is is problematic.

You know, so

Asia, East Africa, places like that where a lot of potatoes are grown, but storage of the seed tubers that you grow to produce the following year's crop is problematic because you've got to use refrigeration and facilities to store those seeds.

But if you could just store them as true seed, then you can just stick it up on your shelf.

A small bag of seed will contain thousands of seeds.

So it's a really ambitious goal.

It's not going to be easy, but as Sandy said, the Chinese and there's various companies in America and the Netherlands and other places really trying to get this diploid potato breeding.

So in a way, it's almost like trying to convert potato into a crop like rice where it's seed propagated and you produce these inbred lines and then you make hybrids.

But it's going to take a while.

And what about, I mean, how much do you think the glamour of the potato has changed since it became really, I suppose, one of the main character players in the film The Martian?

Do you feel that's changed the kind of glamour of the potato?

Yeah, I've seen a bit of TV stars and things promoting particular varieties, so I think it has achieved a little bit more glamour than maybe it had.

Does potato make glamour, Robin?

I mean, the potato,

okay, I'll just say it.

I think the potato is one of the sexiest foodstuffs you can possibly get.

If you can say that if you are having a romantic dinner with someone and they make proper mashed potato, right, smoothed.

Yep.

It's this is the thing about the potato, and I've enjoyed listening to the genetics and the chromosomes.

Fundamentally, though, I think it's such it's versatile because it can be sexy or it can be workman-like, oh, I just need a big potato for lunch, let's go.

Right?

It can, it fulfills every human emotion.

Like, I'm sad, I'll have chips, I'm happy, I'll have dauphinois.

It can reflect every emotion that a human being can feel.

The potato responds to that.

Unlike any other foodstuff, the potato can be what you want it to be at that time and can change your emotions.

It can make you happier than you were before you had it.

That's why I think potatoes are amazing, because they are emotionally responding to us as human beings.

That was going to be the last question.

Why do you think potatoes are so popular?

And you've answered it in a way that I could not have imagined.

So, I don't need to.

I thought you were going to say something about the calories and they're easy to grow and things like that.

But the thing is, they add.

So, my favorite way of eating a potato is a very Scottish thing.

It's called a potato scon.

Oh, I see.

That was nearly artichoke.

That was the only artist show.

It's not a potato farl, it's a potato scone, it's flat, and you have it with your square sausage roll or your bacon roll or something something like that.

And it is the most beautiful way to eat potato, a glistening fried potato scone at the start of the day.

You are a hero when you leave that room because it makes you feel so magnificent when you have the crunch of it with a little bit of egg yolk.

So, to me, potatoes, that's my favorite way, but all potatoes, there is not a single part of my life that is not made better by the addition of a potato.

With that

thing going on, I should say.

We need to go to South America.

Oh, yeah.

Imagine having not one species to attempt your life, but thousands of varieties.

Thousands of varieties.

5,000 varieties.

Imagine what that would be like.

Do you know what?

I can see my cell phone next to my wife.

I'm going, I'm going to South America to potatoes.

Potatoes.

I know

just going wild.

There are expeditions out there, potato expeditions.

Can we do that?

I do that.

Can we do that?

Yeah.

Can we do that?

Yeah, sure.

No, I don't.

I don't think she quite got what I'm saying.

No, can we do that?

Yes.

I'm going to South America, guys.

Well, we've a research collaboration.

The Marketing of Costco, well, go for it.

I'll come back.

And every show I do, I'll be about potatoes from now on.

That's the thing.

And everyone will go, do you remember Susan Cowen?

She was great before the potato thing happened.

And each time you'll just be metamorphosising a little bit more into potato.

That's where.

Have you noticed her waffly hands?

I mean, they're still versatile, but nevertheless.

So we asked the audience a question, but I don't think any of the answers are going to be anywhere near what we've just heard from Susan.

So, Susan, we've given you some there as well.

So, what have we asked the audience?

We asked: if you were to give a potato a new quality, what would it be?

What have you got, Brian?

The ability to distill itself and pop into a tumbler with a couple of ice cubes and some Indian tonic at 5 p.m.

every day.

That's from Anna.

Legs, so it could truly become a walker's crisp.

Boom, boom.

I didn't write it.

Immortality.

On maturity, a potato will now stop aging and stay fresh until cooked and eaten.

That's actually a very good idea.

That's very nice.

That's a very good idea.

The ability to regenerate its outer covering when peeled, because skins can only get better.

Readily infused with strong flavours like chili or wasabi, because zings can only get better.

I don't know how you do it, I really don't.

I mean, this is episode 204, but the D-Ream puns have never dried, have they?

Thanks to our panel, Sandy Knapp, Glenn Bryant, Susan Cowman.

Now, we will quickly tell you what's on next week, but we do have a very different kind of ending of the show.

So, anyway, next week, we are going to be asking the question because we're in the middle of festival season as this goes out,

we're going to be talking about techno-fossils.

How much longer can middle-aged men do big fish, little fish, big fish, little fish before their grandchildren burst into tears or run away and hide?

That's not it.

The techno-fossils, they're what technology of today might be like in millions of years' time if they were buried and dug up.

It's not.

So there's no dancing.

No.

That's a relief.

Anyway, so.

But now we have a special ending,

a special performance of the monkey cage theme tune because we're joined by a sound artist Helen Anahita Wilson, who is going to, well, she's going to answer the question: what does a potato sound like?

And can you make

the obvious question that wasn't asked on the panel, which is, can you make music using potatoes?

So, Helen, could you could you describe why one would ask that question?

Well, what you're about to hear is a unique sound never heard by any ears other than my own until now.

It is a world premier botanical edible musical mash-up of biological information from six different types of potato.

And the sound itself comes from bioelectrical data from baking potatoes, salad potatoes, anything I could pick up in the supermarket, basically.

But I should say,

for the listeners, you're going to play by hitting potatoes with electrodes in them.

I have made a keyboard out of potatoes.

So the white keys are baking potatoes, the black keys are some lovely textured red potatoes.

I don't know their names, unfortunately.

And I've connected all of these up with electrodes.

I'm also going to tape myself with electrodes so that the electrical current goes through all of us together.

I am communing with the potatoes in this performance.

Wish me luck.

Hang on, just before you start, I just want to ask Susan,

how do you feel about this?

I've never been more excited in my life.

It's when you said that you were going to attach yourself to the potatoes.

Using electrodes.

You are, you and the potato are

one.

This has been the best day of my life.

But you too could commune with the potatoes.

Don't you, buddy?

I know what I'm doing tomorrow.

Don't you worry, I'm going to strip a couple of lamps, get the wires out.

I'm there.

Are we ready?

monkey cage.

Till now, nice again.

From BBC Radio 4, this is What Seriously?

I'm Dar Obre.

And I'm Izzy Sutty.

And in our new series, we're bringing you short stories and tall tales.

What seriously?

It's packed with real-life, strange, but true stories that make you go, what, seriously?

And provide you with excellent social ammo to impress your friends.

The twist is, we don't know how each story unfolds, and we'll have to figure it out one fragment at a time with our special guests who each have a mysterious connection to the tale.

That's right.

I am your spy expert.

And I don't really want to bring you back to the real facts of the story because you're making me laugh so much, but I feel like I should.

We're the only country in the world that ate the animal on our crest, like, and I never know whether to feel terrible or brilliant about that.

All these engineers are trying desperately to reduce the amount of dust in space, and you get Izzy taking up a balloon full of blitz.

Wow, you're welcome.

Shut up.

I know, right?

It's like I'm eating from a sheet or something, but never have.

Join us for What Seriously?

From BBC Radio 4.

Available now on BBC Sounds.

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