A head, and heart, for the lowly potato

David Tay puts on a lab coat and pushes through a door labeled with a black-and-white sign that reads simply, “Potato.” This room, where thousands of “plantlets” sit in test tubes under bright lights, is his domain, his turf – his potato patch. Here at the International Potato Center (CIP) – home of the world’s largest potato collection – Dr. Tay is the head of the potato gene bank, where scientists are seeking to keep alive 4,600 potato varieties native to the Andes. Maintaining a potato collection is not cutting-edge science, the type that lands on the front pages of research journals. It is tedious, thankless work. Tay jokingly compares it to garbage collection – meaning the kind of job that most people prefer not to do. Yet for him, it’s a treasure trove...