Can you imagine a world without chips, roast potatoes or mash?

These days potatoes are considered the world’s favourite vegetable, and the fifth most important food crop in the world (after rice, wheat, soy beans and maize). It is hard to imagine a world without potatoes. But that hasn’t always been the case. Potatoes were first brought to the Europe from the Americas in the 1550s. But in the United Kingdom they were viewed with suspicion for two centuries. As a member of the nightshade family, they were also presumed to be poisonous, and were dismissed as only being suitable only to feed animals, as is revealed in the show Royal Gardens on a Plate (starting Thursday January 12 8.35pm on SBS, then catch it on SBS On Demand.). More