Da Lat potatoes

Characteristics

Potato plants are herbaceous perennials that grow to about 60 cm in height, and die after flowering. Potato flowers are white, pink, red, blue, or purple, pistil yellow. Potatoes are pollinated mainly by insects, wasps that carry pollen from one plant to another, but there are also a number of self-pollinating. After the potatoes have flowered, some varieties produce green berries similar to the cherry tomato fruit color, which can contain 300 seeds. Potatoes contain a large amount of the alkaloid and solanine, so they cannot be eaten. All new potato varieties are grown from seeds that differ from the bulbs. Cut the potatoes and soak in water, the seeds separate and sink to the bottom after a day of soaking. Any type of potato can be grown with tubers. Some commercial potato varieties are not produced all from the seed (due to the unfavorable variety for flowering) but are grown by tubers, confusing the tubers and pieces of tubers known as pest damage.

History

Potatoes originated from Peru, in a study published by David Spooner in 2005, the home of potato plants is an area south of Peru (just north of Lake Titicaca). It is now thought that potatoes were introduced to Europe around the 1570s (about 8 years after Columbus' first voyage in 1492) and was later brought by European seafarers. territories and ports around the world when European colonial rule expanded in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. There are thousands of things (subclasses) of potatoes found in the Andes, where one can find more than a hundred things in a valley, each farmer can store up to a few dozen. Different types of potatoes.

When it was popular in Europe, potatoes soon became a staple food and crop in many other parts of the world. The lack of genetic diversity due to the fact that few different species were originally introduced made the potato at this time susceptible to disease. In 1845, a fungal disease, Phytophthora infestans, also known as blight, spread rapidly throughout Western Ireland, leading to the Great Irish Famine. Potato was an important species of some European countries at the time such as Idaho, Maine, North Dakota, Prince Edward Island, Ireland, Jersey and Russia because of its vast role in the agricultural economy and the history of the this area. But in the last decades of the twentieth century, the largest area of ​​potato cultivation was in Asia, where about 8% of the world's potatoes were grown. Since the Soviet Union was dissolved, China has become the largest potato producing country in the world, followed by India.

Nutrition

Potatoes contain vitamins, minerals and a variety of phytochemicals such as natural carotenoids and phenols. Chlorogenic acid constitutes up to 90% of phenol in potatoes. Other compounds in potatoes are 4-O-caffeoylquinic acid (crypto-clorogenic acid), 5-O-caffeoylquinic acid (neo-clorogenic acid), 3,4-dicaffeoylquinic acid and 3,5-dicaffeoylquinic acid. In a medium sized potato, 150 g, provides 27 mg of vitamin C (45% of daily value), 620 mg of potassium (18%), o, 2 mg of vitamin B6 (10%) and one trace amounts of thiamin, riboflavin, folate, niacin, magnesium, phosphorus, iron and zinc.

Potatoes contain about 26 grams of carbohydrate in an average tuber. The main form of this carbohydrate is starch. A small portion of it is resistant to digestion from enzymes in the stomach and small intestine. This mineral starch is considered to have physiological effects and health benefits like fiber: is to fight colon cancer, increase glucose intake, reduce cholesterol and triglyceride levels in plasma, increase susceptibility satiety, even it can reduce the fat stored in the body. Potato processing can significantly change the nutritional content. For example, cooked potatoes contain 7% mineral starch, when cooled, it increases to 13%.

Potatoes are classified as high Glycemic (GI) foods, so they are often excluded from the diet of people who try to follow a low GI diet. In fact the GI depends on different types of potatoes.

Due to its high carbohydrate content, potatoes are thought to make obese people more abundant than fat. However, research by the University of California, Davis and the National Center for Food Safety and Technology, Illinois Institute of Technology proves that people can include potatoes in their diet and still lose weight. .