Berkeley Sweet Potatoes Summary

LISTEN:

NPR Interview with author Charles C. Mann & Fresh Air’s Terry Gross (37 minutes).

In ‘1493,’ Columbus Shaped A World To BeLinks to an external site.

READ:

From Sweet Potatoes to DNA: New Evidence Supports Links Between South American and Polynesian Cultures,Links to an external site. from the Smithsonian Science Education Center.

Assignment Details:

After you have listened to the NPR interview and read the Smithsonian article, do some research on your own to investigate how  crops have travelled from one place to another. In particular, I’d like you to find stories/evidence of crops shared by indigenous people.  Be creative! Tell me the story of your chosen crop and its distribution.

Choose a crop and do some research about where the crop originated, what plant family it belongs to, its botanical vs culinary classification, and cover the main features of cultivation (diseases, pests, disorders, pollination, where and how it is most commonly grown). It does not to be a food crop – it can be an ornamental crop etc.

Details:

Do some research online to find a crop that interests you. Ideas – Solanaecous crops (potato, tomato, tobacco, etc), Cannabaceae (hemp, hops), Brassicaceae or Cruciferae (broccoli, brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, etc). If you don’t know where to start, here is an extensive list Links to an external site.to get you going.

Write <500-word summary including:

Scientific name (genus, species, and authority) e.g. Tomato Solanum lycopersicum L. (formerly Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) use a taxonomic database such as NCBI (Links to an external site.)

Origin  – where did the species originate and how was it distributed?

Plant family

Botanical classification and culinary classification when appropriate

Common diseases, pest, and disorders

Pollination and seed dispersal

How and where it is commercially grown

listenhttps://www.npr.org/2011/08/08/138924127/in-1493-columbus-shaped-a-world-to-beread https://ssec.si.edu/stemvisions-blog/sweet-potatoes-dna-new-evidence-supports-links-between-south-american-and

 

 
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