Staples and Seeds by Where They First Grew

Genetic evidence points to the Israel-Jordan area of the southern Fertile Crescent as the primary site where barley was domesticated from a wild grass, with securely dated remains at Tell Abu Hureyra by 7500 BCE. In Babylonia and Assyria it was the principal everyday grain and also served as a standard unit of payment and weight.

The onion is known only from cultivation and its wild ancestor has not been identified, but the atlas places its origin in West or Central Asia, variously described as Iran, western Pakistan and Central Asia. Its early use stretches from about 5000 to 2000 BCE.

Archaeobotanical evidence makes the Yellow River basin of northern China the leading candidate for where wild soybean was first domesticated. Dating has shifted: early estimates reached back nine thousand years, while a large study of charred remains found clearly domesticated seeds closer to fifty five hundred years ago. Tofu, soy sauce, miso, tempeh and natto all grow from this crop.

Rye came into cultivation later than wheat, barley and oats, and it stays absent from the archaeological record until the Bronze Age of central Europe. It tolerates cold and poor soil better than wheat, which made it the principal bread grain of northern Europe and, through rye malt, the base of kvass.

The sweet potato is native to the tropical regions of South America, in what is now Ecuador, and the oldest radiocarbon dated remains were found in caves of the Chilca Canyon in Peru. It is only distantly related to the true potato and even more distantly to true yams.

The peanut is native to South America and ripens its pods underground, a trait called geocarpy that led Linnaeus to name the species hypogaea, Greek for under the earth. Like other legumes it hosts nitrogen-fixing bacteria in its root nodules, which is why it suits crop rotations.

Quinoa was domesticated in the Andes of Peru and Bolivia, centred on the Lake Titicaca basin. It was one of the main foods of Andean peoples before the Inca state and was valued for tolerating the altitude, cold and drought of the altiplano. The United Nations named 2013 the International Year of Quinoa.

Cassava was domesticated in Brazil, though studies differ on exactly where and when within the country. Portuguese traders carried it to West Africa by the mid sixteenth century, and from there it spread to become, after maize, one of the most important staple foods of Sub-Saharan Africa because it tolerates poor soil and drought.