The case of the poison potato

In the late 1960s, researchers from the US Department of Agriculture, Penn State University, and the Wise Potato Chip Company teamed up breed a very special potato, which they named the Lenape.

More than 30 years later, one of their colleagues still thought fondly of that spud.

“Lenape was [wonderful],” Penn State scientist Herb Cole told journalist Nancy Marie Brown in 2003. “It chipped golden.”

Yes, the Lenape made a damn fine potato chip.

Unfortunately, it was also kind of toxic.

Lenape was genetically predisposed towards producing an extraordinarily high amount of solanine, no matter what happened to it during growth and harvest.

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