Collecting seeds and specimens was an integral aspect of botany and natural history in the eighteenth century. Historians have until recently paid less attention to the importance of collecting, trading and compiling knowledge of their cultivation, but knowing how to grow and maintain plants free from disease was crucial to agricultural and botanical projects. This is particularly true in the case of food security. At the close of the eighteenth century, European diets (particularly among the poor) began shifting from wheat- to potato-dependence. In Britain and Ireland during these decades, extensive crop damage was caused by diseases like 'curl' and 'dry rot' - leading many agriculturists and journal editors to begin collecting data on potato cultivation in order to answer practical questions about the causes of disease and methods that might mitigate or even eliminate their appearance. Citizens not only produced the bulk of these data, but also used agricultural print culture and participation in surveys to shape and direct the interpretation of these data. This article explores this forgotten scientific ambition to harness agricultural citizen science in order to bring stability and renewed vitality to the potato plant and its cultivation. I argue that while many agriculturists did recognize that reliance upon the potato brought with it unique threats to the food supplies of Britain and Ireland, their views on this threat were wholly determined by the belief that the diseases attacking potato plants in Europe had largely been produced or encouraged by erroneous cultivation methods.

中文翻译：

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培育饥荒：数据、实验和粮食安全，1795-1848 年

收集种子和标本是 18 世纪植物学和自然历史的一个组成部分。直到最近，历史学家才不太关注收集、交易和汇编其栽培知识的重要性，但了解如何种植和保持植物不受疾病影响对农业和植物项目至关重要。在食品安全方面尤其如此。18 世纪末，欧洲的饮食（尤其是穷人）开始从依赖小麦转变为依赖马铃薯。在这几十年里，在英国和爱尔兰，“卷曲”和“干腐病”等疾病造成了广泛的作物损害 - 引导许多农业学家和期刊编辑开始收集有关马铃薯种植的数据，以回答有关疾病原因和可能减轻甚至消除其外观的方法的实际问题。公民不仅产生了大量这些数据，而且还利用农业印刷文化和参与调查来塑造和指导对这些数据的解释。本文探讨了这种被遗忘的科学野心，即利用农业公民科学为马铃薯植物及其种植带来稳定和新的活力。我认为，虽然许多农业学家确实认识到对马铃薯的依赖给英国和爱尔兰的食品供应带来了独特的威胁，