The potato (Solanum tuberosum) is a perennial plant of the Solanaceae, or nightshade, family, commonly grown for its starchy tuber. Potatoes are the world's most widely grown tuber crop, and the fourth largest crop in terms of fresh produce (after rice, wheat, and maize), but this ranking is inflated due to the high water content of fresh potatoes relative to that of other crops. The potato originated somewhere in South West South America, probably Peru or Chile.

Potatoes are important to the culture of the Andes , where farmers grow many different varieties that have a remarkable diversity of colors and shapes. Potatoes spread to the rest of the world after European contact with the Americas in the late 1400s and early 1500s and have since become an important field crop.

The Quechua word for potato is papa. In the 16th century, the potato was introduced to Spain (the first record is from Seville , around the year 1570) and from there to the rest of Europe, North America, Africa and Asia . The name "potato" comes from the Spanish word "batata", meaning sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas. The sweet potato had arrived much earlier; Christopher Columbus himself had brought it back from the Caribbean . The potato has only a very distant relationship with the sweet potato, but because the edible part of both crops is an underground organ (a root in the case of the sweet potato), they have often been confused.

In Spain , the potato is now called patata ; in South America , papa is used instead. From Spain , the potato went to Italy , where it was likened to truffles (mushrooms that grow underground), or tartufoli in Italian. The German word for potato (Kartoffel) is derived from this Italian origin. Another common name is "earth-apple": pomme de terre in French, aardappel in Dutch, tapuach adama in Hebrew (often contracted as the single word tapud), Erdapfel in Austrian German and "sib zamini" in Persian. Pomme meant fruit or vegetable in XVI century French and pomme de terre (fruit of the earth) was possibly translated literally when the potato was adopted by further nations.