History of a World Crop...
Taro is an ancient food plant and was perhaps the first staple food to achieve inter-continental and trans-oceanic distribution. Before the era of modern shipping, more than two hundred years ago, taro was already widespread in Africa, the Mediterranean, Asia, the Indian Ocean, Australia, and the Pacific Ocean.
Investigating the origins, dispersal and domestication this plant has been my main occupation for the last twenty years. I have approached the study of taro from various directions, partly because of my own wish not to be constrained by any particular methodology, and partly because of a need to define the scope of various historical problems presented by this wide-ranging but little studied crop. The study of taro remains an open field...
The pages developed here will not offer a comprehensive account of past or current research on taro. They will introduce some fragments of the present author's own research, on an ad hoc schedule.
For more practical information, see Nga Taro o Aotearoa (Taro in New Zealand), and the links attached there.
Paper currently in preparation:
"On the provenance and providence of wildtype taros (Colocasia esculenta) in Myanmar" (with Kyaw Win Naing, VFRDC, Myanmar).
Thank you,
P. J. Matthews, National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka (September 2004)