The wild tuber-bearing Solanum species never intended to feed us. They evolved swollen subterranean stems to survive from season to season as dormant storage organs in a wide range of habitats in the Americas, with centres of diversity in Mexico and Peru. Our knowledge of them has come from numerous collecting expeditions to North, Central and South America from the 1920s to the 1990s. They are a valuable but underutilized plant genetic resource for breeding new potato cultivars better adapted to providing global food security during a period of climate change. They need to be conserved, both in situ and ex situ in genebanks, studied, and used in breeding programs through knowledge of their taxonomy, reproductive biology and adaptive traits. The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) came into force on 29 June 2004, and by 16 July 2024, it had 152 contracting parties (out of 194 countries). The treaty recognized the contribution of farmers to the diversity of crops that feed the world, established a global system to provide farmers, plant breeders and scientists with access to plant genetic materials, and ensured that recipients shared the derived benefits with the countries of origin.