Carrot
Daucus carota
A member of the parsley family,
the carrot is one of the world’s oldest plant foods.
Originating in Afghanistan, the carrot traveled westward
to the region of the Mediterranean Sea. The Greeks
were familiar with carrots, using their juice to cure
stomach ailments.
At first carrots were purple, yellow
or white, not the orange familiar to Bugs Bunny. The
people of northern Belgium probably bred and refined
the orange root in the latter part of the 1500’s.
The Spanish brought the carrot to the Americas, first
planting it on the island of Margarita, off the coast
of Venezuela, sometime in the 1500’s.
Known for their abundance of Vitamin
A, a substance essential to healthy eyesight, carrots
are being bred to produce even more of the vitamin.
Beta III, a variety from the University of Wisconsin,
contains 3 to 5 times more Vitamin A than the average
carrot. Beta III was developed especially for growing
in countries where severe Vitamin A deficiency leaves
hundreds of thousands of people blind each year.
China is carrot king of the world,
with the U.S. coming in second in production. California
leads the states in production.
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