Santa Claus around the world is known in many guises: He is Father Christmas in Britain and Kris Kringle in Germany. In Hawaii, Santa arrives by outrigger canoe, and in Australia, by water skis wearing a red bathing suit. In Ithaca, N.Y., he works at Cornell University, drives a red '97 pickup truck and gives out potatoes.

For a decade, just before the holidays, Ken Paddock and his elflike colleagues in the university's potato-breeding program have given away tons of potatoes to hungry families throughout central New York. Despite the summer drought, more than 20 tons of the Cornell potatoes are being donated this season.

From 1991 to the latest harvest, Paddock, who is a Cornell research support specialist in the Department of Plant Breeding, has given away 205 tons of high-quality, commercial-grade potatoes. That's 6,854 bushels, or the equivalent of 82,248 five-pound bags, to help feed hungry families.

"Giving these potatoes to charities solves a major problem for us. What do we do with the potatoes after we obtain our data? We're happy, very happy, to get them into the hands of people who can really use them," says Paddock.

The great potato giveaway started in the autumn of 1991 when Paddock heard a radio interview with Jean Owens of the Tompkins County, N.Y., Food Distribution Network in which she appealed for donations to area food pantries. Since then, the food network and several local charities have been distributing the Cornell potatoes. And Lynn Rider, plant breeding field assistant, and plant breeding technicians Jerry Beeman, Deborah Kenyon-Koch and Mark Stilwell assist by grading and storing the potatoes until they are picked up.

Last year Paula Currie, executive director of the Catholic Charities of Cortland, N.Y., used 1,500 pounds of the Cornell potatoes to fill 518 Christmas baskets, which served about 1,400 needy people. She described the baskets as "indeed bountiful."

The Dryden, N.Y., Junior Honor Society filled 400 5-pound bags for the Salvation Army of Ithaca last year, and the Marathon, N.Y., Honor Society bagged several tons of potatoes for Cortland County (N.Y.) food pantries, according to Paddock. The Interlaken, N.Y., Reform Church has prepared food baskets featuring the Cornell spuds for about 120 families.

The donated potatoes are fine, developmental commercial varieties and are in no way rejects from researchers' fields, says Paddock. It takes 12 to 15 years to bring a new variety from the crossing stage, by which sought-after characteristics are selected, to the market. On average, the Cornell potato-breeding program releases a new variety once every other year.

In the meantime, breeders try to understand how the variety will grow. Thus, the potatoes being groomed for commercial release – either for chipping, boiling, baking or steaming – are found in large numbers in Cornell's research fields.