The cultivars being grown today are the products of deliberate hybridizations and selections by breeders, starting in the nineteenth century with potatoes of unknown pedigrees, but tracing back to the cultivated landraces of South America. This conventional breeding was taken forward in the twentieth century by national and international research institutes, universities and commercial companies. Since 1961 these organizations have been able to secure Plant Breeders’ Rights and royalty income on their new cultivars. Furthermore, since its foundation in Peru in 1971, the International Potato Centre (CIP) has done pre-breeding with potato wild relatives and cultivated landraces and made improved germplasm available to developing countries, mainly in the global south, for release as cultivars or for further breeding through their own National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS). The focus is on cultivars for the tropical highlands and subtropical lowlands across South and Southeast Asia, East Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. These global efforts should result in new cultivars that will help potato production both to increase globally and to make a greater contribution to food security and human health. Genetic research is making conventional breeding more efficient and effective through the use of molecular markers and diploid F1 hybrids.