Curtis Rees, age 10, of Altoona, Iowa, for his question:

Where did the first potatoes come from?

Throughout the world, countries with temperate climates grow and consume 11 billion bushels of potatoes a year. This equals 330,000,000 tons of boiled, baked, fried and otherwise prepared potatoes. About one twentieth part of this global helping of potatoes is grown in the Americas. This is surprising, because before Columbus crossed the stormy Atlantic, all the potatoes in the world were grown in South America. The Spanish explorers were introduced to them by the original inhabitants of South America.

The first of the delicious white tubers came from terraced slopes of the Andes. Nobody knows how many centuries the talented farmers of ancient Peru, Columbia and Bolivia had been cultivating them there. In the 1550s, the Spanish introduced American potatoes into Europe and their popularity soon spread from country to country. In the 1600s, the North American settlers adopted them as a basic food crop.