Russet Burbank
Potato cultivar
Russet Burbank is a potato cultivar with brown skin and few eyes that is the most widely grown potato in North America. A russet type, its flesh is white, dry, and mealy, and it is good for baking, mashing, and french fries (chips). It is a common and popular potato.
Origin
This variety is a mutation of the cultivar 'Burbank's Seedling' that was selected by the plant breeder Luther Burbank in 1873. The known lineage of Russet Burbank began in 1853 when Chauncey E. Goodrich imported the Rough Purple Chili from South America in an attempt to add diversity to American potato stocks which were susceptible to late blight. Goodrich bred Garnet Chili from Rough Purple Chili, and Albert Bresee bred Early Rose from Garnet Chili, from which Luther Burbank bred Burbank. This cross-over was formerly known as the Russell, but was eventually popularized as the Russet potato in the American stores. Russet Burbank has been widely, but incorrectly, reported to have been selected in 1914 by the Colorado potato grower Lou D. Sweet. A 2014 study confirmed that it was originally released in 1902 by L. L. May & Co and was first known as the Netted Gem.
To improve the disease resistance of Irish potatoes, Luther Burbank selected the potato that became known as "the Burbank." It was not patented because plants, such as potatoes, propagated from tubers were not granted patents in the United States.
The public source identifies “Russet Burbank” as potato cultivar. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Russet, Burbank and Potato.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3453513. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1873, 1853, 1914 and 2014.
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This entry incorporates text from “Russet Burbank” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.