SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH—According to a statement released by the University of Utah, genetic analysis of the Four Corners potato, (Solanum jamesii), by scientists from Red Butte Garden and the Natural History Museum of Utah (NHMU) suggests that the nutritious wild tuber became a staple crop planted by the ancestors of modern Diné, Southern Paiute, Apache, and Pueblo peoples on the arid Colorado Plateau. The samples in the study came from 25 modern Four Corners potato populations in the Mogollon Rim of central Arizona and New Mexico. Fourteen of the potato populations were found growing near archaeological sites, and were determined to be smaller and less genetically diverse than plants from S. jamesii populations growing wild in areas without archaeological sites. The researchers also determined that the S. jamesii populations in southern Utah’s Escalante Valley originated from plants growing in other locations. “Domestication of a plant species can begin with people gathering and replanting propagules in a new location,” said Lisbeth Louderback of NHMU. “The potato joins a large assemblage of goods that were traded across this vast cultural landscape,” she explained. The researchers plan to continue to study the Four Corners potato to learn about the early stages of its domestication. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Nature. To learn more about the origins of potatoes of the American Southwest, go to "Letter from the Four Corners: In Search of Prehistoric Potatoes."
