The potato is a large part of Western diets and can go with almost every meal. A human can live off of almost just potatoes alone due to it high carbohydrate load and other vitamins that humans need. This was partially what played into the high impact of the Irish potato famine. The Irish lived almost entirely potatoes due to the fact that was one of the few things that would grow in the harsh environment of Ireland. When the potato famine hit Ireland, it was from a natural virus that affects plants and mutated to attack potatoes which stopped them from being able to grow. This left Ireland with little to no large source of food.

When the potato famine struck Ireland, the main source of food was decimated, and people quickly started to starve to death. This lead to a wide scale panic throughout Ireland in the early 1900’s. Many people just packed up and left, and many migrated to the United States. Those that couldn’t leave were struck with famine, and many people were left to forage for themselves just to survive. This problem was only fixed by genetic modification of the plant to be more resistant to this virus, which allowed potatoes to once again strive in the climate of Ireland.

The ability, and technology to genetically modify plants has helped to different species of plants to new areas they couldn’t grow before and make these plants more resistant to disease. This has effectively stopped the possibility for another potato famine to cause chaos and death like it did a century ago. This relatively new ability has also led to the creation of completely new species of plants like the Carolina Blue Reaper pepper, the hottest pepper in the world. This has more or less opened up so many doors for scientists to explore.