Curated playlist
Tropical agriculture
- RiceRice feeds over half the world, yet less than 8% of it crosses a border. Most is grown and eaten close to home.
- MaizeMaize cannot reproduce without people. Its kernels stay locked to the cob instead of scattering.
- PapayaPapaya's white sap can tenderize meat, but it also stops jelly from setting. The enzyme papain is the reason.
- CassavaCassava, a staple for over 800 million people, can kill if prepared badly. Raw roots contain toxic cyanide compounds.
- GrapefruitOne glass of grapefruit juice can push some medicines to overdose levels.
- SorghumSorghum bread baked about 5,100 years ago now sits in a museum in Turin. It was found in graves of Predynastic Egypt.
- Orange (fruit)Every sweet orange descends from one cross between a mandarin and a pomelo. No sweet orange grows wild anywhere.
- Subsistence agricultureIn 2015, roughly 2 billion people grew most of their own food on small farms.
- SugarcaneSugarcane was first grown mainly to feed pigs. Papuans and Austronesians in New Guinea did not prize it as a sweetener.
- Sweet potatoSweet potatoes were in Polynesia centuries before any European ship arrived.
- 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.
- AvocadoEvery Hass avocado tree alive descends from one mother tree. A California mail carrier raised it from a single seedling.
- PineappleThe pineapple, Ananas comosus, once inspired a British aristocrat to crown a hothouse with a stone cupola 14 metres tall, built in the shape of the fruit. That aristocrat was John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, and the rooftop ornament is…
- 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…
- OkraOkra, known to botanists as Abelmoschus esculentus, is a plant that most people meet only as a green pod on a plate. In parts of the English-speaking world it goes by the name lady's fingers. Those pods are green in most plants and red in…
- Date palmThe date palm, Phoenix dactylifera, has grown seven trees named Methuselah, Hannah, Adam, Judith, Boaz, Jonah and Uriel. Each one sprouted from a seed about 2000 years old that had been stored by accident. The seeds came from a cultivar…
- Yam (vegetable)Yam is the common name for certain plants in the genus Dioscorea, and among the Igbo people of south eastern Nigeria it comes with a rule. No one eats the newly harvested tuber until the community has marked the feast called Iri ji ọhụrụ.…
- 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…
- QuinoaQuinoa, the seed crop of the high Andes, once carried a grand nickname from the Incas: chisiya mama, which in Quechua means mother of all grains. Botanically, that title is generous. Quinoa is not a grass and not a true cereal. It is a…
- ChayoteChayote is an edible fruiting vine of the gourd family, and in Brazil its local name doubles as a pet name. Chuchu is the Brazilian word for the fruit, and it is also a term of endearment, much like calling someone "Honey" in English. The…