Cultivation of blueberries in history

The blueberry is a member of the heath family (Ericaceae) and is native to North America and East Asia. Wild Blueberries emerged on the desolate plain, aptly called The Barrens of Maine, Eastern Canada, and Quebec, following the retreat of the glaciers more than 10,000 years ago.

Blueberry cultivation is thought to have started when Native Americans burned wild stands of lowbush blueberries (V. angustifolium Ait. and V. myrtilloides Michx.) to tend them and to increase production. Wild blueberries were utilized for making medicines, dyes, and flavorings, as well as for direct consumption.

More advanced blueberry domestication began in New Hampshire in 1908 by the United States Department of Agriculture. Highbush blueberry cultivation and breeding programs, which began in the early 1900s, paved the way for the modern blueberry industry

In 1911 Dr F.V. Goville of the U.S.D.A. began a series of crosses among six native selections of three Vaccinium species (V. australe, V. corymbosum and V. angustifoliam). This work led to the release of the first named cultivar Pioneer in 1920.

By the 1930s and 1940s, blueberries were being grown in North Carolina and the West Coast, with further expansion occurring in subsequent decades.

Since 1960 and up to 1977 a further 15 Highbush Blueberry cultivars, have been released to the USA industry by various public agencies.

Since the 20th century American blueberry species and varieties have been spread to Europe. European cultivation of highbush blueberry began after 1920, in the Netherlands. In the following years cultivation spread to Poland and Germany, where the first European blueberry breeding products, crosses of Northern American were introduced.

However, highbush blueberry cultivation did not expand into southwestern European until the 1980s.
Cultivation of blueberries in history

Date palm cultivation during ancient times

Date palm is one of the oldest plants cultivated by human beings and has been used as food for 6000 years.

Date palm has been cultivated in the Middle East and North Africa for millennia; however, the exact origin of date palm has not been verified.

The earliest planting of date palm was coincident with the oldest civilizations and extended from northeast Africa to northwest of the Tigris and Euphrates plateau. Phoenicians promoted the planting of date palm around Mediterranean regions in ancient times. Phoenicia, the name by which part of the Levant, particularly the portion including Tyre and Sidon, was known to the Romans and Greeks, means "land of palms".

Due to the transfer of date from Phoenicia region to Mediterranean regions, Greeks call it Phoenix. Human beings carried the plant with them as a major product during emigration and promoted its use and cultivation.

It was used in Mesopotamian times since 4000 BC and by the Egyptians perhaps during 3000–2000 BC. The African date palm (P. reclinata) or the Indian date palm (P. sylvestris) or both may have been the progenitor of date palm.

In Mesopotamia, it was used for the construction of the temple of the moon god near Ur in Southern Iraq.

In Egypt's Nile Valley, it was used as the symbol for a year in Egyptian hieroglyphics and its frond as a symbol for a month. However, the culture of date palm did not become important in Egypt until somewhat later than that of Iraq.
Date palm cultivation during ancient times

History of Rice in India

India is an important center of rice cultivation. The rice is cultivated on the largest areas in India. The country has the world’s largest area and is the second highest producer of rice. The crop is grown under varying climatic and soil conditions under diverse ecologies spread over about 43 million hectares.

Historians believe that while the indica variety of rice was first domesticated in the area covering the foothills of the Eastern Himalayas (i.e., north-eastern India), stretching through Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Southern China, the japonica variety was domesticated from wild rice in southern China which was introduced to India.

Combining archaeobotany and genetics suggests that O. sativa subsp. indica emerged through hybridization from a proto-indica that was managed in a morphologically wild state with introduced domesticated japonica rice, perhaps circa 2000 BC.

Archaeological work in India uncovered at the Neolithic site Lahuradewa in the Ganges Valley containing evidence of rice consumption dating to 7000 – 5000 BC.

Clear domesticated rice began to become widespread across northern India between 2000 and 1500 BC.

Perennial wild rice still grows in Assam and Nepal. It seems to have appeared around 1400 BC in southern India after its domestication in the northern plains. It then spread to all the fertile alluvial plains watered by rivers. Some says that the word rice is derived from the Tamil word arisi.

Arab traders took arisi with them and called it al-ruz or arruz in Arabic. This became arroz in Spanish and oriza in Greek.

Rice is first mentioned in the Yajur Veda (c. 1500-800 BC) and then is frequently referred to in Sanskrit texts. In India there is a saying that grains of rice should be like two brothers, close but not stuck together.

Asian rice cultivation spread to become a major agricultural staple throughout much of monsoon Asia between 1000 and 0 BCE, and it also began to be adopted on a smaller scale as a crop in Mesopotamia. One author has proposed that rice was introduced to lower Mesopotamia from India during the Achaemenid period, probably on the strength of a 4th century BC description by Diodorus of rice among military provisions at Susa.

The crop may well have been introduced to Greece and the neighboring areas of the Mediterranean by returning members of Alexander the Great’s expedition to India around 344-324 BC.

Rice was a major crop in Sri Lanka as early as 1000 BC. Before entering Sri Lanka in 543 BC, indica rice made their way to Malaya and from here to the Indonesian island of Java.
History of Rice in India

Food History: Rice cultivation in Yangtze Basin

Rice (Oryza sativa) is one of the most important crops in the world and it was most likely part of the diet as far back as 15,000 years BP. Prehistorical agriculture in China can be primarily divided into two major cultural areas based on the main crop types. Taking the Qinling Mountains - Huaihe River Line as an approximate boundary, to the north is millet agriculture along the Yellow River, and to the south is rice paddy agriculture along the Yangtze River.

Archeologists have found evidence that rice was an important the Yangtze Basin in the late Neolithic period. The Lower Yangtze River is densely distributed with Neolithic sites and is widely regarded as a core area where rice agriculture originated.

These cultural sequences comprise the Shangshan (11,000-8500 BP), Kuhuqiao (8000 7400 BP), Majiabang (7000-6000 BP), and Hemudu Culture (7000-5300 BP) during the early to middle Holocene.

The Neolithic site at Hemudu is the most significant when early rice cultivation is concerned. The Hemudu culture is the most significant Neolithic culture in southern China. The Hemudu culture flourished at south Hangzhou Bay in Yuyao city, Zhejiang Province, and was discovered in 1973.

The Hemudu culture is the most significant Neolithic culture and is identified by its distinct style of pile dwellings and rice remains in southern China, which are distributed primarily in the eastern coastal area and divided into two main periods with a remarkable interruption and dispersal around 6000 BP.

The Majiabang culture coexisted with the Hemudu culture for about two thousand years as two separate and distinct cultures, with cultural transmissions between them. Majiabang people cultivated rice.

Development of irrigation technology to construct flooded farms gave strong bases for stable rice-cultivating society, which in the end formulated the rise of ancient kingdoms of Yue and Wu in China in BC 6th -5th centuries. They were direct descendants of those people who had developed the unique rice cultivation from the era of Hemudu culture.
Food History: Rice cultivation in Yangtze Basin

Origin of rice

Rice is a unique crop of great antiquity an akin to progress in human civilization. Archeological excavations throughout Asia indicate that the domestication of rice Oryza sativa, occurred some seven thousand years ago.

Current opinion now suggests that the first domestications of rice occured at more than one place in Asia. Asian rice was first domesticated on flood-plains as a shallow or deep water crop, with cultivation later extended to the rain-fed uplands.

Augustin Pyrame de Candolle in 1882 postulated in his book that rice culture first occurred in China where historical records were the earliest.

Rice cultivation is thought to have started in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and then spread gradually both northwards and southwards.

Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov in 1951 considered that rice domestication occurred in India. The references to rice appear in ancient Hindu script (estimated to be 1500 to 1000 BC. Up- to the 1950s, the oldest excavation of rice grains was found at Hasthinapur at between 1000 an 750 BC.
Origin of rice

Mango in India

Mango cultivation probably originated in India, and it was estimated that mango cultivation to have began at least 4000 years ago.

This fruit is intimately associated with the history of India agriculture and civilization and it enjoys a royal status in the country when compared to the other growing places. Ancient Sanskrit literature described the mango as ‘king of fruits;. Ayurvedic medicine recognizes mangoes as an aphrodisiac and in some ancient n texts it is written that the ripe mango increases sexual energy and stamina.

The first group of people to spill the beans and initiate trade of the fruit were peripatetic Buddhist monks four or five centuries BC. A mango tree is depicted in friezes on the stupa of Bharut, which was constructed around 100 BC.

Available records indicate that the soldiers of Alexandra the Great has come across grove in Indus Valley. 

Traders and monks from India possibly introduced superior elections of mango into South-east Asia: however, vegetative propagation was unknown in India until after the arrival of the Portuguese in Goa in the 15th century.

During Mughal time, Akbar the Great paid the greatest tribute to mango who established an orchard of one lakh mango trees, designated as ‘Lakh-Bagh’ in Darbhanga in erstwhile Bihar State.

The mango tree and fruit are referred in the travelogues of ancient travelers including Huan tsang, Ibn Hankal and Ibn Batuta of which the Chinese traveler Huan-tsang is the first one to bring mango to the notice of the outside world during 632-645 AD.
Mango in India

History of vanilla

Vanilla is one of the most exotic, rare, expensive, intense and popular of all flavors and fragrances. The Totonac peoples were the first to use, and later grow, vanilla.

It was agreed nearly all ethnobotanists, anthropologists, and historians agree upon is that, although the vast majority of vanilla beans today are produced in the Island of Madagascar, the plant originally domesticated in southeastern Mexico.

Vanilla was used in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican for a variety of purposes: tribute, cacao flavoring, medicinal, etc., and by numerous indigenous groups such as the Maya, Aztec, and Totonac.

Vanilla beans were first picked from wild vines in the forest when they were ripe and already full of scent. Eventually the Totonac farmed vanilla vines and learned how to cure the beans.

Aztec aristocracy used it mostly as an after-dinner luxury. They never saw for themselves. This due to the plant hidden deep in the tropical forest far from Tenochtitlan, it was known only to the people who lived within its range.

The Aztecs added vanilla to a drink they called chocolatl, which include cacao beans, corn, honey and chili peppers.

Following Spanish colonization of Mexico and Central America, vanilla began a more international journey. Impressed by the taste and flavor of the drink offered by Aztec Indians, Hornando Corte introduces it to Spain. It was a cocoa drink mixed with vanilla.

An early record of vanilla’s various uses as medicine, perfume, and flavor is presented in the Florentine Codex, a series of books written and illustrated under the supervisor of the Spanish Franciscan missionary Bernardino de Sahagun between 1540 and 1585. In the books it was mentioned that Aztecs used vanilla in cocoa, sweetened with honey and sold in their markets.

The Spanish named the bean vainilla, which comes from a Spanish word from the ‘sheath’ since the cured pod looks like a miniature sword sheath or cover.

England’s Queen Elizabeth I, who reigned from 1558 to 1603, was said to eat and drink only food to which vanilla extract had been added, after he apothecary suggested that the spice could be used for purposes other than flavoring chocolate.

Beginning in the mid- to late eighteenth century, the Totonac of the Papantla region of the state of Veracruz were the first and only vanilla exporters in the world for nearly 100 years.

The Mexican monopoly on vanilla fell apart with the discovery of method for hand pollination of vanilla in Belgium in 1836.

Though it was documented during 16th century, the commercial cultivation started only in the early 19th century.

More than half of the world’s vanilla beans end up in the United States. Half of those are used in the dairy industry, mainly in the form of vanilla extract, or essence.
History of vanilla

History of rice in Mississippi

In United States, the first commercial planting occurred in South Carolina in about 1685.

The more technologically sophisticated method of rice cultivation, which became increasingly common after 1750, made use of the natural rise and fall of water near tidal estuaries.

Rex L. Kimbriel, a Mississippi delta cotton farmer, first experimented with a small crop of rice in 1947 and in 1948 with four neighboring farmer planted 400 acres of rice.

Pumping probes and an early frost ruined their crop, but the potential was clear. In 1949, Kimbriel and other delta farmers planted 1800 acres in rice, built their own rice dryer.

Rice growing had spread to over one and a half million acres in several states by 1950.

Mississippi had fallen behind neighboring states in developing it, but the use of new methods of drying, combine harvesting and chemical insect control seemed about to launch rice as a major Delta crop.

Rice research done at the Delta Branch Experiment Station led to the development of optimal varieties and cultural practices for Mississippi rice farming. Mississippi rice farming was expanding rapidly by the middle of 1970s.
History of rice in Mississippi

History of Apples cultivation in United States

In England apples were grown everywhere and had been there so long that Englishman considered them as native to their island.

Finding no apples in America, early settlers quickly remedied the situation by planting apple seeds brought from England.

Before the arrival of settles from Europe, Native Americans commonly gathered raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries that grew will in openings in the forest.

Apples came to North America with the colonists in the 1600s, and the first apple orchard on this continent is said to have been located near Boston in 1625.

Apples were the fruits most commonly grown in the colonies. It was grown chiefly for cider, which was a common drink of rich and poor, used for farmers’ own consumption and for sale, trade and export.

A 1666 English settlers in North Carolina’s Cape Fear River was described as growing ‘apples, pears and other English fruits…..out of planted kernels’.

Anglican clergyman William Blaxton apparently raised the first American variety of apple-the Yellow Sweeting- on Beacon Hill in Boston about 1640.

From New England origins, apples, moved west with pioneers John Chapman (alias Johnny Appleseed), and missionaries during the 1700s and 1800s.

In 1900s, irrigation projects in Washington State began and allowed the development of the multibillion dollar fruit industry, of which the apple is the leading species.

The oldest apple variety surviving today is probably the Pomme d’Api, a small yellow or red fruit that originated in ancient Rome, known today in North America as the Lady or Christmas Apple.
History of Apples cultivation in United States

Brief history of mango

The wild mango originated in the foothills of the Himalayas in India and Burma. The first group of people to spill the beans and initiate trade of the fruit were peripatetic Buddhist monks four or five centuries BC.

The mango was cultivated in Java at least as early as AD 900-1100, when the temple at Borobudur was built and faced with carvings of the Buddha in contemplation under a mango tree.

The Chinese traveler Hwen Tsang, who visited India during the first half of the seventh century AD, brought the mango home with him to China.

One theory holds that mangoes first reached Africa by way of Persia in the tenth century. Traders from Portugal introduced mangoes to Brazil in the 1700s and to Barbados in 1742. From there, mangoes then began popping up all over the world.

The cultivation of the fruits began in Mogul, India, where the fruit is still considered sacred and is thought to have aphrodisiac effects. In the 16th century, a special technique employing grafting was developed for propagating the mango.

As early as the sixteenth century, the name ‘mangas’ was used for the mango in the Greek Work, ‘Colloquies on Simples and Drugs of India’. The earliest mentioned of mango tree, Mangifera indica, which means ‘the great fruit bearer’, is found in Hindu scriptures dating back to 4000 BC.

The mango is a member of the Anachardiaceae family which includes poison ivy, cashews, and pistachios. It is also known as manga, mangga, mangot, mangou, and mangue in other parts of the world.

The mango comes in over 50 varieties, ranging in color from greenish, yellowish, to reddish, often tinged with purple, pink, orange-yellow, or red.
Brief history of mango

Rice Cultivation

Rice Cultivation
The most commonly cultivated rice species, Oryza sativa (Asian or paddy rice), is grown primarily in the humid topics and subtropics, with some cultivation on flooded upland sites, such as central California.

Another less important rice, Oryza glaberrima (African rice), is grown in east Africa, but is being replaced by Oryza sativa.

The cultivated rices and their ancestors are considered to be diploid (2n = 24), although their high chromosome number indicates that they could be ancient, diploidized polyploids.

Ten genomes have been identified among the various sections of Oryza, based on chromosome pairing relationships, molecular markers and sequencing.

The cultivated species and their closest relatives carry the A genome and form what is referred to as the sativa complex. The A genome is further divided with superscripts to denote small pairing aberrations and partial sterility among the various diploid species.

The origins of Asian rice cultivation are also clouded. Many authorities consider India to be its cradle, but strong cases have been made for much earlier origin in central China and South East Asia.

From its beginning somewhere in Central Asia around 10,000 BC, rice cultivation probably moved into Korean and Japan by 3000 BC. The cultivation of African rice probably began in the Niger delta about 3500 years ago and spread gradually across tropical East Africa.

Asian rices arrived in Africa about 2000 BC. Rice found its way to the New World in 1647, when its cultivation was begin in the Carolinas.
Rice Cultivation

History of Black Mustard

History of Black Mustard
Black mustard or Brassica nigra is native to the Mediterranean region, where it is reported as a fossil from prehuman Pleistocene time. The species probably joined Neolithic agriculture as a volunteer in wheat and barley fields, spreading with those crops through Eurasia and North Africa.

Millennia later, Brassica nigra went with those crops oversea, its seeds often carried accidentally with the cereal grain. In California, for example, it was a weed during the Spanish period and remains are common in adobe bricks of the early mission.

Like other mustards Brassica nigra is used as a green vegetable and as a source of mild tasting nonvolatile oil expressed from the seed. However, its main use has been as a spice. Use of mustard seed as a spice dates from the beginning of written history in Babylonia and India and is abundantly recorded in classical Greek, Roman, and biblical sources. Although other species of Brassica were also used, it seems likely that Brassica nigra was the main source in ancient history as it has been in modern history.

Traditionally, mustard is prepared by mixing a small amount of seed of white mustard Sinapis alba, other spices, and a lot of Brassica nigra seed. In ancient times, volunteer plants wee probably more than adequate without deliberate planting. Cultivation of Brassica nigra as a field crop came after Medieval times, along with commercial production in Düsseldorf, Dijon and a few other European towns.
History of Black Mustard

History of Asparagus

History of Asparagus
Asparagus name is derived from Greek word asparagos. It’s native to the East Mediterranean area, cultivated form antiquity and now grown in much of the world. Asparagus cultivation began 2000 years ago in eastern Mediterranean region. Greeks and Romans ate it fresh when in season and dried the vegetable for use in winter.

Having appeared in England as early as the year 1000, it was known as sperage and sperach. Asparagus has been used as a vegetable and medicine, owing to its delicate flavor and diuretic properties.

The Emperor Augustus coined the phrase ‘velocius quam asparagi conquantur’, meaning to do something faster than you can cook asparagus. Julius Caesar first ate it in Lombardy and wanted it served with melted butter. And in the time of King Louis XIV asparagus was dubbed ‘The King of Vegetables’.

In the 16th century, asparagus gained popularity in France and England. From there, the early colonists brought it to America and often called the “Food of Kings”. King Louis XVI of France, who did indeed dress in silken splendor when he dined, was so in love with asparagus that his gardeners were instructed to grow it in hothouses for his year round pleasure.
History of Asparagus

Egyptian Farming and Food in 1300 BC

Egyptian Farming and Food in 1300 BC
Harvest of the fertile River Bank
Neat parcels of farmland bordered the Nile, and it was there that nearly all Egyptians worked. The boundaries between farmers’ fields were marked with special stones, and during the annual inundation the Nile’s water obliterated all landmarks except the stones. The dishonest farmer then had an unparalleled opportunity to move boundary stones in his favor, but stealing precious land in this way was one of the worst sins an Egyptian could commit.

When the river water started to recede, the farmer’s first tasks were to reinstate any migrant boundary stones, and to repair flood damaged to dykes. The Egypt’s yearly round of cultivation began in earnest. Peasants with digging sticks broke up the larger clods of earth: then came ox-drawn ploughs followed by sowers scattering seed by hand, and sheep or goats to tread the seed in.

Growing season
During the growing season, the farmers worked hard weeding and watering the crops. They also help to protect them from birds, and from straying cattle and even the hippopotamus.

Egyptian most important crops were wheat and barley, and flax which they grew for linen and linseed oil. Grain was harvested in March or April. All work in the fields and the threshing floor was a communal effort, and land owner provided musicians to play flutes while peasants worked.

End of the Season
The beehive-shaped silo each stored one type of grain, and a small farm would have several of them. Then everyone celebrated in honor of Renenutet, guardian goddess of harvest. The middle of March marked the beginning of the summer season of drought and heat. During this period it was vital to repair any damaged irrigation canals before the soil dried out and became too hard to dig. For a few weeks farmers enjoyed a brief rest before the floods came again.
Egyptian Farming and Food in 1300 BC