Curated playlist
Austronesian agriculture
- ChickenChickens were apparently first kept for fighting, not for food. Eggs and meat came later.
- SugarcaneSugarcane was first grown mainly to feed pigs. Papuans and Austronesians in New Guinea did not prize it as a sweetener.
- CardamomOne German coffee planter helped make Guatemala the top cardamom grower. He brought the plant there before World War I.
- Cooking bananaCooking bananas feed more than 70 million people across Africa alone. They are starchy and largely inedible raw.
- BananaAlmost every banana eaten in the Western world is a single seedless clone. That sameness is its greatest weakness.
- CoconutEvery coconut on a remote Pacific island arrived because a person brought it. Ocean currents alone could not do it.
- GingerIn 14th century England, a pound of ginger cost as much as a sheep. Ginger began as a crop of ancient seafarers.
- NutmegBritain gave up a nutmeg island to the Dutch and got Manhattan. Run Island was traded in the Treaty of Breda.
- CloveMinisters of a Han Dynasty emperor had to hold a clove in their mouths before speaking to him.
- TaroTaro, the root vegetable that botanists call Colocasia esculenta, reached 18 million tonnes of world production in 2022. Nigeria alone grew 46 percent of that total, far ahead of every other country. The crop ranks fifth among the world's…
- Areca nutThe areca nut is chewed by around 600 million people, mainly of South and Southeast Asian origin. It leaves red stains on pavements from South Asia to the northern Philippines. This seed of a tropical palm, also called betel nut, acts as a…
- Dioscorea alataAround 1939, a Mambatap greater yam grown in Maprik, in the East Sepik District of Papua New Guinea, reached 3.5 m in length. That giant root belonged to Dioscorea alata, a species of yam better known as ube. People also call it ubi, uwhi,…
- BreadfruitA single breadfruit tree can hand a household 200 or more grapefruit-sized fruits in one season, and it asks for very little care in return. That makes Artocarpus altilis one of the highest-yielding food plants known. It belongs to…
- JackfruitThe jackfruit, Artocarpus heterophyllus, can weigh as much as 55 kilograms, which makes it the largest fruit that grows on a tree. A mature tree produces around 200 of them each year, and older trees can bear up to 500. This giant belongs…
- CalabashA calabash gourd grown in Taylorsville, Kentucky, in 2001 weighed 111.5 kilograms. That single fruit hints at the range of Lagenaria siceraria, the vine known as the calabash or the bottle gourd. Its fruits can be huge and round, small and…