Chuño: the freeze-dried potato of the Collao in the first printed accounts, and its trade to Potosi

The potato entered print in 1553 not as a curiosity but as a food security system. Cieza describes the Collao drying papas in the sun and keeping them from one harvest to the next as chuño, the reserve that stands between an unirrigated highland and famine - and reports that Spaniards grew rich carrying it to sell at the mines of Potosi. Acosta confirms the trade in 1590 and adds the harvest failures. The plant Europe later grew came mostly from elsewhere in the Andes.