0_Wizard
The potato while delicious is also the worlds fourth largest food crop! 
It is the world's fourth-largest food crop, following maize, wheat, and rice.
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Potato
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Potato
The potato is a starchy, tuberous crop from the perennial nightshade Solanum tuberosum. "Potato" may be applied to both the plant and the edible tuber. Potato has become a staple food in many parts of the world and an integral part of much of the world's food supply. It is the world's fourth-largest food crop, following maize, wheat, and rice. The green leaves and green skins of tubers exposed to the light are toxic. In the Andes, where the species is indigenous, some other closely related species are cultivated. Potatoes were introduced to Europe in the second half of the 16th century by the Spanish.
Sweet potato
The sweet potato ("Ipomoea batatas") is a dicotyledonous plant that belongs to the bindweed or morning glory family, Convolvulaceae. Its large, starchy, sweet-tasting, tuberous roots are a root vegetable. The young leaves and shoots are sometimes eaten as greens. The sweet potato is only distantly related to the potato ("Solanum tuberosum") and does not belong to the nightshade family, Solanaceae, but both families belong to the same taxonomic order, the Solanales. The plant is a herbaceous perennial vine, bearing alternate heart-shaped or palmately lobed leaves and medium-sized sympetalous flowers.
Food security
Food security is a condition related to the supply of food, and individuals' access to it. There is evidence of granaries being in use over 10,000 years ago, with central authorities in civilizations including ancient China and ancient Egypt being known to release food from storage in times of famine. At the 1974 World Food Conference the term "food security" was defined with an emphasis on supply. Food security, they said, is the "availability at all times of adequate world food supplies of basic foodstuffs to sustain a steady expansion of food consumption and to offset fluctuations in production and prices".
Colocasia esculenta
Colocasia esculenta is a tropical plant grown primarily for its edible corms, the root vegetables most commonly known as taro. It is believed to be one of the earliest cultivated plants. Linnaeus originally described two species which are now known as "Colocasia esculenta" and "Colocasia antiquorum" of the cultivated plants that are known by many names including eddoes, dasheen, taro and madumbi, but many later botanists consider them all to be members of a single, very variable species, the correct name for which is "Colocasia esculenta". Taro () commonly refers to the plant "Colocasia esculenta", the most widely cultivated species of several plants in the Araceae family which are used as vegetables for their corms, leaves, and petioles.
History of the potato
The potato was first domesticated in the region of modern-day southern Peru and extreme northwestern Bolivia between 8000 and 5000 BC. It has since spread around the world and become a staple crop in many countries. Cultivation of potatoes in South America may go back 10,000 years, yet the tubers do not preserve well in archaeological record, and there are problems with exact identification of those that are found. The earliest archaeologically verified potato tuber remains have been found at the coastal site of Ancón (central Peru), dating to 2500 BC. Potatoes dating to about 2000 BC have been found at Huaynuma, in the Casma Valley of Peru, and early potatoes dating to 800-500 BC were also uncovered at the Altiplano site of Chiripa on the east side of Lake Titicaca.
Phytophthora infestans
Phytophthora infestans is an oomycete or water mold, a microorganism which causes the serious potato and tomato disease known as late blight or potato blight. (Early blight, caused by "Alternaria solani", is also often called "potato blight".) Late blight was a major culprit in the 1840s European, the 1845 Irish, and the 1846 Highland potato famines. The organism can also infect some other members of the Solanaceae. The pathogen is favored by moist, cool environments: sporulation is optimal at 12–18°C in water-saturated or nearly saturated environments, and zoospore production is favored at temperatures below 15° C. Lesion growth rates are typically optimal at a slightly warmer temperature range of 20 to 24° C.  The genus name "Phytophthora" comes from the Greek φυτό-(phyto), meaning : "plant" - plus the Greek φθορά (phthora), meaning : "decay, ruin, perish".
Genetically modified crops
Genetically modified crops (GMCs, GM crops, or biotech crops) are plants used in agriculture, the DNA of which has been modified using genetic engineering methods. In most cases, the aim is to introduce a new trait to the plant which does not occur naturally in the species. Examples in food crops include resistance to certain pests, diseases, or environmental conditions, reduction of spoilage, or resistance to chemical treatments (e.g. resistance to a herbicide), or improving the nutrient profile of the crop. Examples in non-food crops include production of pharmaceutical agents, biofuels, and other industrially useful goods, as well as for bioremediation.
1_Apprentice
I love potatoes and they really help stretch the food budget, so filling yet inexpensive
0_Wizard
Yes that is one of the reasons they are so popular. They were introduced to Europe in the late 16th century by the Spanish. They have never gone out of style since
Potatoes were introduced to Europe in the second half of the 16th century by the Spanish.
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Culture of the United Kingdom
The culture of the United Kingdom is influenced by the UK's history as a developed island country, a liberal democracy and a major power; its predominantly Christian religious life; and its composition of four countries—England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland—each of which has distinct customs, cultures and symbolism. The wider culture of Europe has also influenced British culture, and Humanism, Protestantism and representative democracy developed from broader Western culture. British literature, music, cinema, art, theatre, comedy, media, television, philosophy, architecture and education are important aspects of British culture.
List of Dutch inventions and discoveries
The Netherlands had a considerable part in the making of modern society. The Netherlands and its people have made numerous seminal contributions to the world's civilization, especially in art, science, technology and engineering, economics and finance, cartography and geography, exploration and navigation, law and jurisprudence, thought and philosophy, medicine, and agriculture. Dutch-speaking people, in spite of their relatively small number, have a significant history of invention, innovation, discovery and exploration. The following list is composed of objects, (largely) unknown lands, breakthrough ideas/concepts, principles, phenomena, processes, methods, techniques, styles etc., that were discovered or invented (or pioneered) by people from the Netherlands and Dutch-speaking people from the former Southern Netherlands ("Zuid-Nederlanders" in Dutch).
Spanish Empire
The Spanish Empire () was one of the largest empires in history. At the time, it was not known as that by the Spanish, but rather the Spanish Monarchy ("Monarquía española") with the monarch ruling kingdoms in Spain, his possessions in Italy and northern Europe, and in the "Spanish Indies," its New World territories. From the late fifteenth century to the early nineteenth, Spain's kingdom of Castile controlled a huge overseas territory in the New World. The crown's main source of wealth was from gold and silver mined in Mexico and Peru. The empire reached the peak of its military, political and economic power under the Spanish Habsburgs, through most of the 16th and 17th centuries, and its greatest territorial extent under the House of Bourbon in the 18th century.
Galley
Galleys were the warships used by the early Mediterranean naval powers, including the Greeks, Phoenicians and Romans. They remained the dominant types of vessels used for war and piracy in the Mediterranean Sea until the last decades of the 16th century. As warships, galleys carried various types of weapons throughout their long existence, including rams, catapults and cannons, but also relied on their large crews to overpower enemy vessels in boarding actions. They were the first ships to effectively use heavy cannons as anti-ship weapons. As highly efficient gun platforms they forced changes in the design of medieval seaside fortresses as well as refinement of sailing warships.
Madrigal
A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six. It is quite distinct from the Italian Trecento madrigal of the late 13th and 14th centuries, with which it shares only the name. Madrigals originated in Italy during the 1520s. Unlike many strophic forms of the time, most madrigals were through-composed. In the madrigal, the composer attempted to express the emotion contained in each line, and sometimes individual words, of a celebrated poem.
Music of Cuba
The music of Cuba, including its instruments, performance and dance, comprises a large set of unique traditions influenced mostly by west African and European (especially Spanish) music. Due to the syncretic nature of most of its genres, Cuban music is often considered one of the richest and most influential regional musics of the world. For instance, the son cubano merges an adapted Spanish guitar (tres), melody, harmony, and lyrical traditions with Afro-Cuban percussion and rhythms. Almost nothing remains of the original native traditions, since the native population was exterminated in the 16th century.
Aristocracy of Norway
Aristocracy of Norway refers to modern and medieval aristocracy in Norway. Additionally, there have been economical, political, and military élites that—relating to the main lines of Norway's history—are generally accepted as nominal predecessors of the aforementioned. Since the 16th century, modern aristocracy is known as nobility (). The very first aristocracy in today's Norway appeared during the Bronze Age (c. 1800 BCc. 500 BC). This bronze aristocracy consisted of several regional élites, whose earliest known existence dates to c. 1500 BC. Via similar structures in the Iron Age (c. 400 BCc.