The potato came from a surprising mashup. Spuds are a basic, delicious food for millions worldwide, yet their origin and evolution have long been a scientific mystery. Not anymore, scientists say. The ...

The delicious, nutritious potato evolved from an ancestor of the tomato, one presumably just as slimy and pointless as the contemporary model. "This wasn't obvious," say the researchers who learned ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The potato is one of the world's food staples, first cultivated thousands of years ago in the Andes region of South America before spreading globally from the 16th century. But ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Etuberosums (left) are potato-like plants that don't grow tubers, but potato plants (right) evolved to grow them. - Agricultural ...

They’re one of the world’s most important food crops and delicious roasted, mashed or fried, but the exact genetic origins of the humble potato have long been something of a mystery to scientists. Now ...

Tracing the potato’s deep ancestry, researchers have revealed a surprising origin story: modern potatoes emerged from natural interbreeding between tomato relatives and a wild-potato-like species ...

The annals of evolutionary history are full of ill-fated unions. Many plants and animals can and do sometimes reproduce outside of their own species, but their offspring—if they come to be at all—may ...

The humble modern-day potato, first domesticated about 10,000 years ago, got its start in the Andes mountains before becoming a key crop the world depends on. But because plants don’t preserve well in ...