New World crops



New World crops are those crops, food and otherwise, that are native to the New World (mostly the Americas) and were not found in the Old World before 1492 AD. Many of these crops are now grown around the world and have often become an integral part of the cuisine of various cultures in the Old World. Notable among them are the "Three Sisters": maize, winter squash, and climbing beans.

Timeline of cultivation
The new world developed agriculture by at least 8000 BC. The following table shows when each New World crop was first domesticated.

Dissemination to the Old World
The transfer of people, crops, precious metals, and diseases from the Old World to the New World and vice versa is called the Columbian Exchange.

Food historian Lois Ellen Frank calls potatoes, tomatoes, corn, beans, squash, chili, cacao, and vanilla the "magic eight" ingredients that were found and used only in the Americas before 1492 and were taken via the Columbian Exchange back to the Old World, dramatically transforming the cuisine there. According to Frank, "If we deconstruct that these foods were inherently native, then that means that the Italians didn't have the tomato, the Irish didn't have the potato, half the British National Dish—Fish and Chips—didn't exist. The Russians didn't have the potato, nor did they have vodka from the potato. There were no chiles in any Asian cuisine anywhere in the world, nor were there any chiles in any East Indian cuisine dishes, including curries. And the French had no confection using either vanilla or chocolate. So the Old World was a completely different place."