Potato's Neglected Cousins

Tubers come in all shapes, sizes and colours, and pack quite a punch

- Deepanwita Gita Niyogi

THE HUMBLE potato, a tuberous crop, has come a long way, and in its triumphal march, has sidetracked all other foods to occupy the prime place on our dining tables. But its cousins are not so lucky. The fat and ungainly elephant foot yam (Amorphophallus paeoniifolius) does not enjoy potato’s wide acceptance. The somewhat spindle-shaped tania (Xanthosoma) is lost amidst colourful veggies piled over it in markets. “Other tubers like cassava (tapioca or Manihot esculenta), taro (Colocasia esculenta) and greater yam (jimikand or Dioscorea alata) share a similar fate,” rues Abdul Nabeel, a farmer from Kozhikode district of Kerala, who grows all these tubers.

There are others like him who share the passion of growing tubers. Shaji N M from Wayanad, Kerala, grows 200 tuber varieties on his 0.80 ha plot. He has earned the sobriquet “The Tuber Man of Kerala” for his enterprise. Shaji also conserves wild tuber varieties that tribals have been gathering from forests for centuries.