Unfortunately, kumara and other plant remains are rarely preserved
in archaeological contexts in the Pacific, and when they are,
such as in the case of the charred remains recovered from the Cook
Islands (Hather and Kirch, 1991) the samples are in poor condition
and aDNA is not obtainable. Historic and linguistic evidence indicate
that there were likely at least two later, independent introductions
of sweet potatoes to the Pacific region. The Spanish
galleons were known to have transported the Meso-American varieties
of camote to the Philippines from Mexico around AD 1500
and Portuguese traders introduced a third variety, batata, to
Indonesia in the sixteenth century from the Caribbean and Central
America. These varieties have since been transported around the
Pacific region and in many places were likely to have hybridized
with or replaced the originally introduced South American varieties
(Yen, 1998), making it difficult to use modern genetic variation to
trace the early history of the plants.