Richard Scaglion

The sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) was important in many agricultural systems throughout the Pacific Islands long before Europeans arrived. Yet botanists have established that the cultivar was first domesticated in the New World, probably in South America. How and when did it arrive in the Pacific Islands?

 

Scientists have applied evidence from diverse disciplines in investigating this problem. Archaeological research indicates the presence of sweet potatoes in central Polynesia more than 1,000 years ago, and linguistic evidence suggests a human-mediated introduction. Varitions of the word kumara are used throughout the Pacific islands and also in parts of South America, suggesting the introduction of the sweet potato into the Pacific could have been effected by Polynesian voyagers who sailed to the west coast of South America, collected the tuber, and brought it back to Polynesia. From there it may have spread more widely throughout the Pacific.

 

Currently, DNA fingerprinting techniques are being applied to analyze hundreds of sweet potato samples to test hypotheses about where ancient Polynesians may have made contact with the New World, the timing of sweet potato introductions into Western Oceania, and the influence of European-era introductions on modern diversity.  The movement of sweet potatoes throughout the Pacific can teach us much about human migration and mobility in Oceania.