And what's more, every single potato plant in Ireland was a clone. Every last one. Since the plant was propagated by cuttings, rather than by seed, every last individual plant was genetically identical to every other one. This was true in most of Britain and mainland Europe as well; potato blight actually struck in the Netherlands before reaching Ireland. The culprit, apparently, is the result of hybridization between a water-mold species that lives in guano, and another water-mold species from central Mexico.
Potato blight is actually a very stunning example of the colombian exchange 
As for those varieties in the Andes... a lot of them are toxic. They're still cultivated, they just need special preparation or even condiments to actually make them edible (for instance; one mouthful of potato, followed by another mouthful of roasted clay dust, which bonds the alkali toxins. Yum yum)
And there you go. More information about potatoes than you probably ever wanted to know. But why not? These things are pretty much one of the cornerstones of the human diet nowadays (other potato fact; you can live perfectly healthily on a diet of nothing but potatoes and milk. All the nutrients are there)
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