Late blight is one of the most devastating crop diseases in history, being part responsible for widespread famine across Western Europe in the 1840s. Parts of Scotland were badly affected but it was in Ireland, where social and political factors acted together with the dependence of the peasantry on this one crop to cause mass famine and emigration, and helping to mould the ethnic complexion of not just North America but parts of Scotland too.

With the discovery of spontaneous blight-resistant hybrids at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh between cultivated potato and the Mexican species Solanum demissum, realisation dawned that late blight could be countered by genes in wild relatives, driving a new phase in plant breeding. This led to the formation of a consortium of British Empire countries funding initial collecting missions in 1938 and 1939, and so forming the start of the Empire Potato Collection, now the CPC.

These first collecting missions were led by E.K. Balls, the reknowned plant collector, assisted by Jack Hawkes. Professor Hawkes (1915-2007) was associated with the collection throughout his career, and rose to prominence as a world authority on potato taxonomy.

In its early years the collection was housed at the Potato Virus Research Station, Cambridge, subsequently moving with its curator D K.S. Dodds to the John Innes Institute, Bayfordbury, on his appointment as director. Later, Dr N.W. Simmons was appointed director of the Scottish Plant Breeding Station and the collection moved with him to the south of Edinburgh. With the amalgamation of the SPBS with the Scottish Horticultural Research Institute in the early 1980s, the collection moved once more to SCRI at Invergowrie, where it has since been enhanced with the collection of wild potato material retained by Professor Hawkes at Birmingham University.