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[Ultimately from Taino casavi, flour from manioc.]
The plant Manihot esculenta (Euphorbiaceae), also called manioc. It is one of the 10 most important food plants, and the most important starchy root or tuber of the tropics. It originated in Central or South America, possibly Brazil, and was domesticated and widely distributed well before the time of Columbus. Subsequent distribution has established cassava as a major crop in eastern and western Africa, in India, and in Indonesia.
The cassava plant is a slightly woody, perennial shrub. The leaves are deeply palmately lobed; the flowers are inconspicuous, and the prominent capsules are three-seeded and explosive at maturity. The roots (see illustration) are enlarged by the deposition of starch and constitute the principal source of food from the plant. The leaves are also eaten (after cooking), and are noteworthy for their high protein content.
Tuberous roots from a single cassava plant.
The chief use of cassava is as a boiled vegetable. It is also a source of flour, called farinha in Brazil and gari in western Africa, and of toasted starch granules, the familiar tapioca. In spite of its popularity, however, cassava root is a poor food. Its protein content is extremely low, and its consumption as a staple food is associated with the protein deficiency disease kwashiorkor. See also Geraniales.
Recipe origin: Cuba
Ingredients
Procedure
Serves 4.
The tuber of the tropical plant Manihot utilissima. It is the dietary staple in many tropical countries, although it is an extremely poor source of protein; the plant grows well even in poor soil, and is extremely hardy, withstanding considerable drought; introduced into Africa by slave ships returning from Brazil in 1569. It is one of the most prolific crops, yielding, up to 13 million kcal/acre, compared with yam, 9 million, and sorghum or maize, 1 million. A 150-g portion is a rich source of vitamin C; a source of iron and vitamin B1; supplies 150 kcal (600 kJ).
Cassava root contains cyanide, and before it can be eaten it must be grated and left in the open to allow the cyanide to evaporate. The leaves can be eaten as a vegetable, and the tuber is the source of tapioca. See also cassareep.
[kuh-SAH-vuh] Though native to South America, the majority of cassava now comes from Africa, where it's an important staple. Also called manioc and yuca, the cassava is a root that ranges from 6 to 12 inches in length and from 2 to 3 inches in diameter. It has a tough brown skin which, when peeled, reveals a crisp, white flesh. There are many varieties of cassava but only two main categories, sweet and bitter. The bitter cassava is poisonous unless cooked. Cassava is available year-round in Caribbean and Latin American markets. It should be stored in the refrigerator for no more than 4 days. Grated, sun-dried cassava is called cassava meal. Cassava is also used to make cassareep and tapioca.
For more information on cassava, visit Britannica.com.
Cassava, or manioc (Manihot esculenta), is a root crop native to tropical America that is now consumed by millions of people throughout the tropics, and is used in food preparation in many industrialized processes. Although it is not well known outside the tropics, cassava now accounts for about 30 percent of the world production of roots and tubers. It is an exceptional producer of carbohydrates and a plant better able to tolerate seasonal drought than other major food crops.
Plant Biology
The cassava plant is a perennial woody shrub that grows from about one to three meters in height. The leaves are palmate (hand-shaped) and dark green in color. The cone-shaped roots are starch storage organs covered with a papery bark and a pink to white cortex. The flesh ranges from bright white to soft yellow. Over five thousand varieties of cassava are known, each of which has its own distinctive qualities and is adapted to different environmental conditions.
The cassava plant is hardy and better able to tolerate drought and poor soil conditions than most other food plants. It can grow in extremely poor, acidic soils because it forms a symbiotic association with soil fungi (mycorrhizae). It is also one of the most productive food plants in terms of carbohydrate production per unit of land, and unequalled in its ability to recover when foliage is lost or damaged by diseases or pests.
The cassava plant is somewhat unusual, and even infamous, because both the roots and leaves can be toxic to consume. The toxicity of cassava is due to the presence of cyanogenic glucosides (compounds of cyanide and glucose) which liberate hydrogen cyanide (HCN) ), a potent toxin, when the plant tissue is damaged. Cyanogenic glucosides are found throughout the plant and in all varieties of cassava. Varieties referred to as "sweet," or low-cyanide, have low levels of cyanogenic glucosides in the flesh of the root and can be peeled and cooked like other root vegetables. Those referred to as "bitter," or high-cyanide, have higher levels of cyanogenic glucosides throughout the root (peel and flesh) and require more extensive processing before they are safe to consume. A number of different processing techniques are used (grating, fermenting, sun drying), all of which serve to damage the plant tissue and hence cause the liberation and volitalization of HCN. The potential toxicity of cassava foods depends on the effectiveness of processing and preparation techniques; high-cyanide roots can be processed to remove all most all traces of cyanide-containing compounds. Many farmers prefer to cultivate the high-cyanide varieties for reasons that are not entirely clear.
History
Cassava was domesticated sometime in the distant past, maybe five thousand years ago. Exactly where is not known, but the current consensus is that domestication took place somewhere in Central or South America, perhaps along the southern border of Brazil, where wild relatives of cassava are currently found.
Cassava was the staple crop of the Amerindians of South America when the Portuguese arrived in 1500 just south of what is known as Bahia, Brazil. The Amerindians living in the area were the Tupinamba, who relied on cassava as a dietary staple, processing it into bread and meal using techniques similar to those still used by Amerindians in the twenty-first century.
When the Portuguese began to import slaves from Africa in about 1550, they used cassava in the form of meal (farinha) to provision their ships and began cultivating cassava at their stations along the coast of West Africa soon afterward. From their stations near the mouth of the Congo River, cassava diffused to all of central Africa. The Portuguese were also responsible for introducing cassava to East Africa, Madagascar, India, Ceylon, Malaya, and Indonesia by the 1700s.
Cassava was probably first introduced into Asia during Spanish occupation of the Philippines and was distributed throughout tropical Asia by the beginning of the nineteenth century. Expansion of cassava cultivation was pushed by colonial administrators who saw cassava as a famine reserve (especially the Dutch in Java, and the British in India), and as an export commodity (Malaya and Java in the 1850s).
Procurement and Production
Cassava is typically grown by small-scale farmers using traditional methods, and farming on marginal lands not well suited to other crops. It is propagated by planting stakes cut from the woody stems of mature plants. These plantings require adequate moisture during the first two to three months, but after that they are relatively drought resistant. Cassava roots mature to harvestable size in six to twelve months depending on variety and ecological conditions, and can be harvested at any time in the following two years, a harvest window that provides farmers an unusual degree of flexibility. To harvest the plants, farmers typically cut off the top three-quarters of the plant, and then pull up the roots and separate them from one another. Mechanical harvesting is still relatively rare.
Because fresh cassava roots deteriorate rapidly (within three to four days) after harvesting, they are usually consumed immediately or processed into a form that has better storage characteristics. Fresh roots (low-cyanide) destined for distant markets can be sealed in wax, packaged in plastic bags, or frozen to prevent deterioration. Leaves can be harvested at any stage of the growth of the plant, but typically only the youngest leaves are picked. The leaves deteriorate rapidly after harvesting and so are generally cooked the same day.
Cassava Foods
Cassava roots are prepared into an amazing variety of foods. Traditional preparation techniques vary by region, and by ethnic group within a given region.
South America. For Amerindians, the most common ways of preparing high-cyanide cassava were as a bread (casabe, cazabe, beiju), a roasted granular meal (fariña, farinha), and as a beer (chicha). In the northwest Amazon the bread is a large, thick (one inch or more) flat bread made by peeling and grating the roots, and then sieving the grated mash with water to separate the liquids and starch from the more fibrous portion. The starch is allowed to settle, and the liquids decanted off the top, then boiled to make a drink (manicuera). The starch and fibrous portion of the roots are stored separately and allowed to ferment for forty-eight hours before being dewatered, and then recombined and baked on a large clay griddle. In Venezuela and Guyana the bread is a thinner, hardtack-like bread made without the starch extraction step.
Farinha is made by soaking the roots of yellow-fleshed, high-cyanide varieties in water until they ferment. The roots are then peeled, grated, mixed with fresh grated roots and the mixture allowed to ferment for a week or more. The mash is then dewatered, sprinkled onto a hot griddle, and roasted while being stirred. The resulting product is a dry granular meal that can be stored almost indefinitely. It is most commonly consumed as chive, a drink that is made by putting a handful of meal in water and swirling to mix. Well-made meal can expand five times in volume and results in a full feeling.
Chicha, a mildly alcoholic beer, is made from both low-cyanide and high-cyanide cassava. With low-cyanide varieties it is prepared by peeling, cooking, and mashing the roots, then adding water and some masticated roots and allowing the mixture to ferment. With high-cyanide varieties it is prepared from manicuera (the cooked juices) and a very thin bread, some of which is masticated, and other cooked roots or tubers.
In the national cuisines of South America, low-cyanide cassava is used as a vegetable (boiled, or boiled and fried). In Brazil, farinha is part of a number of traditional dishes, and in Colombia several breads are made with the fermented starch of high-cyanide cassava.
Africa. Cassava is the second most important food crop in sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of the cassava-based foods made in Africa rely on fermentation in one form or another. Two common products are gari, a granular meal similar to farinha, and fufu, a sticky dough made by pounding cooked or fermented roots into a paste. Other products include chikwange or baton de manioc, a steamed/boiled paste made from soaked roots, and lafun, a flour made from soaked roots.
Asia. Cassava roots are prepared in most Asian countries by boiling, baking, and frying. Another widespread practice is to peel, slice, and sun dry the roots and then grind them into a flour. The flour is then used to make porridge, or other traditional foods like chappatis and dosas (India), bibingka (Philippines), and a rice-like product called landong (Philippines). Commercially produced cassava starch is exported as tapioca.
South Pacific. Boiling and baking are the most common techniques for preparing cassava roots. On some islands cassava is also used to prepare ma, a traditional fermented product typically made from breadfruit.
North America and Europe. The pure starch, or tapioca, extracted from cassava roots is commercially available as a flour, flakes, or pellets (pearls) and is used to thicken a wide variety of food products such as sauces, gravies, pie fillings, pudding, and baby foods. The well-known dessert tapioca pudding is made with the pearls, which become gelatinous, semi-transparent balls in the finished product, affectionately referred to as "frog spawn" by British schoolchildren.
Relations to Human Biology
Fresh peeled cassava roots are rich in carbohydrate (30–35 percent), and low in protein (1–2 percent) and fat (less than 1 percent). They have nutritionally significant amounts of calcium (50 mg/100g), phosphorous (40 mg/ 100g) and vitamin C (25 mg/100g). The quality of the protein is relatively good, and the starch is highly digestible. Fresh cassava leaves are a good source of protein (23 percent), vitamins, and minerals.
The cyanide-generating potential of cassava roots and leaves has been of considerable concern. Although traditional methods of processing are effective in reducing cyanide content to innocuous levels, inadequate processing, as sometimes occurs during famine and periods of social upheaval, or the rush to market, can lead to health problems, particularly cyanide poisoning.
In South America there is no evidence of acute or chronic cyanide toxicity associated with cassava consumption by Amerindians for whom cassava is a traditional dietary staple, even though some groups rely on varieties of cassava with a very high cyanide content. In other parts of the world, however, cassava consumption has been associated with cyanide toxicity and other disorders. Acute cyanide poisonings are relatively rare, but can be fatal. The cases typically involve the consumption of raw or inadequately processed cassava. The symptoms are dizziness, headache, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.
In Africa, cassava-based diets have been associated with two neurological disorders: tropical ataxic neuropathy (TAN) and konzo. Both occur among the rural poor on diets largely restricted to high-cyanide cassava. TAN is a disease characterized by ataxia (muscular incoordination), reduced sensory perception, and deafness. The onset is slow and the course progressive, and it is found primarily in adults over the age of forty. Konzo is a disease characterized by the sudden onset of spastic paralysis in both legs, which results in a slightly spastic gait in mild cases and a complete inability to walk in severe cases. It primarily affects children and women under forty, and tends to occur in areas under conditions of famine or near-famine when people have nothing to eat but cassava and their nutritional status is poor. Both of these disorders are relatively rare given the millions of people on cassava-based diets in Africa.
The cyanide found in cassava-based diets is metabolically detoxified to thiocyanate and therefore cassava consumers have higher than normal levels of thiocyanate in body fluids. This is thought to be beneficial in areas of West Africa where sickle-cell anemia is present because thiocyanate inhibits the tendency of hemoglobin molecules to sickle. It is problematic in areas of Africa where the dietary iodine intake is low because thiocyante blocks iodine uptake by the thyroid gland. In these areas, cassava consumption is associated with iodine deficiency disorders including goiter, cretinism, mild mental disorders, and other related conditions.
Cassava As a Symbol of Identity
Important food plants like cassava tend to be powerful symbols of social and cultural identity. These symbolic associations can be clearly seen in South America.
For the native people like the Tukanoan, cassava is one of the most important and highly valued foods, and is consumed with meals and most snacks. They believe that cassava was the first food; it was planted by the first woman to make bread for the first man. They consider the extracted starch, weta, to be the purest, whitest, and more nourishing of foods. The term weta also means the essence of something. For non-Indian subsistence farmers in the Amazon, farinha is an essential component of everyday meals and snacks, as well as an ingredient in special dishes. People will go to considerable trouble and expense to obtain it from the market when home-produced supplies run out because cassava is part of the fabric of everyday life, and consuming it part of their identity. In contrast, for Brazil's urban elite, farinha is only occasionally consumed as part of certain traditional dishes, and the everyday consumption of farinha is seen as a marker of lower class status and poverty.
Global and Contemporary
Cassava now provides about 30 percent of worldwide production of roots and tubers, and is the staple crop of over 200 million people in Africa alone. World production increased more than four-fold in the last two decades of the twentieth century, with most of this increase being in Africa. Cassava is a crop with enormous potential to provide food energy, and a crop that will play a particularly important role in areas like Africa where the production of adequate food is a serious challenge.
It is also a crop that has received relatively little attention from researchers in comparison to the dominant food crops of the green revolution—wheat, rice, and maize. However, efforts are underway to rectify the situation, and find ways to capitalize on cassava's strengths (high productivity, tolerance of poor soils and low rainfall, and relatively good resistance to pests and disease) and to improve its major shortcomings (rapid postharvest deterioration), and address its cyanide content. The following areas are particularly promising:
Bibliography
Balagopalan, Cherukat, Gourikkutty Padmaja, Saroj K. Nanda, and Subramoney N. Moorthy. Cassava in Food, Feed, and Industry. CRC Press, Inc.: Boca Raton, Fla., 1988.
Cock, James H. Cassava: New Potential for a Neglected Crop. Boulder, Colo., and London: Westview Press, 1985.
Dufour, D. L. "The Bitter is Sweet: A Case Study of Bitter Cassava (Manihot esculenta) Use in Amazonia." In Food and Nutrition in the Tropical Forest: Biocultural Interactions. Edited by A. M. Hladik, A. Hladik, O. F. Linares, H. Pagezy, A. Semple, and M. Hadley. Man in the Biosphere, vol. 15, pp. 575–588. Paris: UNESCO and Parthenon Publishing, 1993.
Dufour, D. L. "Cassava in Amazonia: Lessons in Safety and Utilization from Native Peoples." Acta Horticulturae 375 (1994):175–182.
Dufour, D. L. "A Closer Look at the Nutritional Implications of Bitter Cassava Use." In Indigenous Peoples and the Future of Amazonia: An Ecological Anthropology of an Endangered World. Edited by Leslie E. Sponsel. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995.
Dufour, D. L. "Cyanide Content of Cassava (Manihot esculenta, Euphorbiaceae) Cultivars Used by Tukanoan Indians in Northwest Amazonia." Economic Botany 42 (1988): 255.
Dufour, D. L. "Effectiveness of Cassava Detoxification Techniques Used by Indigenous Peoples in Northwest Amazonia." Interciencia 14, no. 2 (1989): 86–91.
Jones, William O. Manioc in Africa. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959.
Lancaster, P. A., J. S. Ingram, M. Y. Lim, and D. G. Coursey "Traditional Cassava-Based Foods: Survey of Processing Techniques." Economic Botany 36, no. 1 (1982): 12–45.
Wigg, David. The Quiet Revolutionaries: A Look at the Campaign by Agricultural Scientists to Hunger and How the Much-Needed Cassava Could Help. Washington, D. C.: The World Bank, 1993.
—Darna L. Dufour
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The cassava, manioc, casava, or yucca (Manihot esculenta) is a woody shrub of the Euphorbiaceae (spurge family) native to South America that is extensively cultivated as an annual crop in tropical and subtropical regions for its edible starchy tuberous root, a major source of carbohydrates. Indeed, cassava is the third largest source of carbohydrates for human food in the world, with Africa its largest center of production.[1]
The cassava root is long and tapered, with a firm homogeneous flesh encased in a detachable rind, about 1 mm thick, rough and brown on the outside. Commercial varieties can be 5 to 10 cm in diameter at the top, and 50 to 80 cm long. A woody cordon runs along the root's axis. The flesh can be chalk-white or yellowish; raw cassava tastes like a mixture of potato and coconut flesh, it breaks like a carrot, and darkens quickly upon exposure to the air. For this reason, the skinned root must be kept under water until it is ready to be cooked. The root's flavor spoils in a day or so, even if kept unskinned and under refrigeration, which is a problem for supermarkets. A solution is usually to freeze it or seal it in wax.
The cassava plant gives the highest yield of food energy per cultivated area per day among crop plants, except possibly for sugarcane. Cassava roots are very rich in starch, and contain significant amounts of calcium (50 mg/100g), phosphorus (40 mg/100g) and vitamin C (25 mg/100g). However, they are poor in protein and other nutrients. In contrast, cassava leaves are a good source of protein if supplemented with the amino acid methionine.
Wild populations of M. esculenta subspecies flabellifolia, shown to be the progenitor of domesticated cassava, are centered in west-central Brazil where it was likely first domesticated no more than 10,000 years BP.[2] By 6,600 BP, manioc pollen appears in the Gulf of Mexico lowlands, at the San Andres archaeological site.[3] The oldest direct evidence of cassava cultivation comes from a 1,400 year old Maya site, Joya de Ceren, in El Salvador.[4] although the species Manihot esculenta likely originated further south in Brazil and Paraguay. With its high food potential, it had become a staple food of the native populations of northern South America, southern Mesoamerica, and the West Indies by the time of the Spanish conquest, and its cultivation was continued by the colonial Portuguese and Spanish. Forms of the modern domesticated species can be found growing in the wild in the south of Brazil. While there are several wild Manihot species, all varieties of M. esculenta are cultigens.
World production of cassava root was estimated to be 184 million tonnes in 2002, the majority of production is in Africa where 99.1 million tonnes were grown, 51.5 million tonnes were grown in Asia and 33.2 million tonnes in Latin America and the Caribbean.
In many places in the Americas, yuca was the staple food. This translated into many images of yuca being used in pre-Colombian art. The Moche people often depicted yuca in their ceramics.[5]
Cassava is harvested by hand by raising the lower part of stem and pulling the roots out of the ground, then removing them from the base of the plant . The upper parts of the stems with the leaves are plucked off before harvest. Cassava is propagated by cutting the stem into sections of appoximately 12", these being planted prior to the wet season.
The root cannot be consumed raw, since it contains free and bound cyanogenic glucosides which are converted to cyanide in the presence of linamarase, a naturally occurring enzyme in cassava. Cassava varieties are often categorized as either "sweet" or "bitter", signifying the absence or presence of toxic levels of cyanogenic glucosides. The so-called "sweet" (actually "not bitter") cultivars can produce as little as 20 milligrams of cyanide (CN) per kilogram of fresh roots, while "bitter" ones may produce more than 50 times as much (1 g/kg). Cassavas grown during drought are especially high in these toxins. [6] [7] One dose of pure cassava cyanogenic glucoside (40mg)is sufficient to kill a cow. Konzo (also called mantakassa) is a paralytic neurological disease associated with several weeks of almost exclusive consumption of insufficiently processed bitter cassava. Dr Howard Bradbury, an Australian plant chemist, has developed a simple method to reduce the cyanide content of cassava flour.[8] The method involves mixing the flour with water into a thick paste and then letting it stand in the shade for five hours in a thin layer spread over a basket, allowing an enzyme in the flour to break down the cyanide compound. The cyanide compound produces hydrogen cyanide gas, which escapes into the atmosphere, reducing the amount of poison by up to five-sixths and making the flour safe for consumption the same evening. This method is currently being promoted in rural African communities that are dependent on cassava.[9]
For some smaller-rooted "sweet" varieties, cooking is sufficient to eliminate all toxicity. The larger-rooted "bitter" varieties used for production of flour or starch must be processed to remove the cyanogenic glucosides. The large roots are peeled and then ground into flour, which is then soaked in water, squeezed dry several times, and toasted. The starch grains that float to the surface during the soaking process are also used in cooking.[10] The flour is used throughout the Caribbean. The traditional method used in West Africa, is to peel the roots and put them into water for 3 days to ferment. The roots are dried or cooked. In Nigeria they are usually grated and lightly fried in palm oil to preserve them.
The reliance on cassava as a food source and the resulting exposure to the goitrogenic effects of thiocyanate has been responsible for the endemic goitres seen in the Akoko area of southwestern Nigeria.[11]
Cooked in various ways, cassava is used in a great variety of dishes. The soft-boiled root has a delicate flavor and can replace boiled potatoes in many uses: as an accompaniment for meat dishes, or made into purées, dumplings, soups, stews, gravies, etc.. Deep fried (after boiling or steaming), it can replace fried potatoes, with a distinctive flavor. Tapioca and foufou are made from the starchy cassava root flour. Tapioca is an essentially flavourless starchy ingredient, or fecula, produced from treated and dried cassava (manioc) root and used in cooking. It is similar to sago and is commonly used to make a milky pudding similar to rice pudding. Cassava flour, also called tapioca flour or tapioca starch, can also replace wheat flour, and is so-used by some people with wheat allergies such as coeliac disease. Boba tapioca pearls are made from cassava root. It is also used in cereals for which several tribes in South America have used it extensively.
The juice of the bitter cassava, boiled to the consistence of thick syrup and flavored with spices is called Cassareep. It is used as a basis for various sauces and as a culinary flavoring, principally in tropical countries. It is exported chiefly from Guyana.
The leaves are pounded to a fine chaff and cooked as a palaver sauce in Sierra Leone, usually with palm oil but vegetable oil can also be used. Palaver sauces contain meat and fish as well. It is necessary to wash the leaf chaff several times to remove the bitterness.
Cassava pie is a traditional Christmas dish. The cassava is peeled and chopped finely, then mixed with egg, butter and sugar. It is layered in a baking dish in alternate layers with chicken or pork. It is then baked in the oven, and leftovers may be fried. It is eaten as a savoury dish, either on the side or as a main meal.
Cassava is heavily featured in the cuisine of Brazil. The dish vaca atolada ("mud-stranded cow") is a meat and cassava stew, cooked until the root has turned into a paste; and pirão is a thick gravy-like gruel prepared by cooking fish bits (such as heads and bones) with cassava flour, or farinha. In the guise of farofa (lightly roasted flour), cassava combines with rice and beans to make the basic meal of the (poor) average Brazilians. Farofa is also one of the most common side dishes to many Brazilian foods including feijoada, the famous meat-and-beans stew. Boiled cassava is also made into a popular sweet pudding. Deep-fried (after boiling), it is often eaten as a snack or side dishes.
Cassava is very popular in Bolivia with the name of yuca and consumed in a variety of dishes. It is common, after boiling it, to fry it with oil and eat it with a special hot sauce known as llajwa or along with cheese and choclo (dried corn). In warm and rural areas, yuca is used as a substitute of bread in everyday meals. The capacity of cassava to be stored for a long time makes it suitable as an ideal and cheap reserve of nutrients. Recently, more restaurants, hotels and common people are including cassava into their original recipes and everyday meals as a substitute for potato and bread.
In Colombia, cassava is widely known as yuca among its people. In the Colombian interior, it is used mainly in the preparation of Sancocho (a kind of rich soup) and other soups. In the Valle department it is famous, the Pandebono bread made of the yuca dough.
In the coastal region, is known especially in the form of "Bollo de yuca" (a kind of bread) or "enyucados". "Bollo de yuca" is a dough made of ground yuca that is wrapped in aluminum foil and then boiled, and is served with butter and cheese. "Enyucado" is a dessert made of ground boiled yuca, anise, sugar, and sometimes guava jam. In the caribbean region of Colombia it is also eaten roasted, fried or boiled with soft homemade cheese or cream cheese and mainly as guarnition of fish dishes.
In Costa Rica, yuca is widely used, both boiled in soups or fried and served with fried pieces of pork and lime. This is sold as a snack in most places you travel. When travelling by bus, the bus is often boarded by a local, trying to sell "sandwich bagged" snacks of yuca, pork and lime. Two main sources of food for locals in rural areas, living off resources within their own land, are yuca and plantain.
In Panama, yuca is sometimes used to make carimanolas. The boiled cassava is mashed into a dough and then filled with spiced meat. The meat-filled dumplings are deep fried to a golden brown. It is also used in brothy soups together with chicken, potatoes, and other vegetables.
Cassava bread (casabe) is an often used complement in meals, much in the same way as wheat bread is used in Spanish, French and Italian lunches. Also, as an alternative to side-dishes like french fries, arepitas de yuca are consumed, which are deep-fried buttered lumps of shredded cassava. Bollitos, similar to the Colombian ones are also made. The root, in its boiled and peeled form, is also present in the typical Dominican stew, the Sancocho, together with plantains, potatoes, yautía, among other vegetables (it can also be eaten singly as an alternative to boiled potatoes or plantains). Also, a type of empanada called catibía has its dough made out of cassava flour.
In Jamaica, cassava is traditionally made into "bammy," a small fried cassava cake inherited from the native Arawak Indians. The cassava root is grated, rinsed well, dried, salted, and pressed to form flat cakes about 4 inches in diameter and 1/2-inch thick. The cakes are lightly fried, then dipped in coconut milk and fried again. Bammies are usually served as a starchy side dish with breakfast, with fish dishes or alone as a snack.
In the small islands of the Eastern Caribbean, cassava is traditionally peeled and boiled and served with flour dumplings and other root vegetables like potatoes, yams, sweet potatoes and dasheen.
As in the Dominican Republic, Cassava bread (casabe) is also a popular complement in traditional meals, as common as the arepas. Venezuelan Casabe is made by roasting ground cassava spread out as meter wide pancake over a hot surface (plancha). The result has the consistency of a cracker, and is broken in small pieces for consumption. There is also a sweet variety, called Naiboa, made as a sandwich of two casabe pancakes with a spread of Papelón in between. Naiboa also has a softer consistency. In general terms, Mandioc is an essential ingredient in Venezuelan food, and can be found stewed, roasted or fried as sides or complements.
Cassava is also popular in Peru by the name of yuca, where it is used both boiled and fried. Boiled yuca is usually served as a side dish or in soup, while fried yuca is usually served together with onions and peppers as an apperitif or accompanying chicha.
Cassava is a staple dish of Paraguay. It grows extremely well in the soil conditions throughout the country, and it is eaten at practically every meal. It is generally boiled and served as a side dish. It is also ground into a flour and used to make chipa, a bagel-shaped bread popular during holidays.
In the humid and sub-humid areas of tropical Africa, cassava is either a primary staple food or a secondary co-staple. Nigeria is the world's largest producer of cassava. In West Africa, particularly in Nigeria and Sierra Leone, cassava is commonly prepared as Eba or Garri. The cassava is grated, pressed, fermented and fried then mixed with boiling water to form a thick paste. In West Africa the cassava root is pounded, mixed with boiling water to form a thick paste and cooked as Eba. Historically, people economically forced to depend on cassava risk chronic poisoning diseases, such as tropical ataxic neuropathy (TAN), or such malnutrition diseases as kwashiorkor and endemic goitre. However, the price of cassava has risen significantly in the last half decade and lower income people have turned to other carbohydrate-rich foods like rice and spaghetti.
In Central Africa, cassava is traditionally processed by boiling and mashing. The resulting mush can be mixed with spices then cooked further or stored. A popular snack is made by marinating cassava in salted water for a few days then grilling it in small portions. Many cassava dishes exist in various African countries.
In Tanzania, cassava is known as mihogo, plural form, in Swahili. Though customs vary from
region to region, and the methods of cooking cassava vary accordingly, the main method is simply frying it. The skin of the root
is removed and the remains are sectioned into small bit-size chunks which can then be soaked in water to aid in frying.
Thereafter, the chunks are fried and then served, sometimes with a chili-salt mixture. This fried cassava is a very common street
food as it is relatively cheap to buy, easy to prepare and good to eat. The staple of the rural people, ugali, is a porridge more akin to mashed potatoes in consistency. In Zambia this
is known as nshima. In Kenya, the Kikuyu name for it is
Residents in the Sub-Saharan nation of the Central African Republic, have developed multiple, unique ways of utilizing the abundant cassava plant. In addition to the methods described above, local residents fry thin slices of the cassava root resulting in a crunchy snack similar in look and taste to potato chips. The root can be pounded into flour and made into bread or cookies. This flour can also be mixed with precise amounts of salt and water to create a heavy liquid used as white paint in construction. The cassava plant leaf is also soaked and boiled for extended periods of time to remove toxins and then eaten. The taste is similar to spinach. In the local language Sango, this is called gozo. U.S. Peace Corps Volunteers stationed in the Central African Republic refer to the cassava plant as the multi-purpose staple.
In the state of Kerala, India, cassava is a secondary staple food. Boiled casava is normally eaten with fish curry (kappayum meenum in Malayalam) or meat, and is a traditional favorite of many Keralians. Kappa biriyani — cassava mixed with meat is a popular dish in central Kerala. In Tamil Nadu, the National Highway 68 between Thalaivasal and Attur has many cassava processing factories (local name Sago Factory) alongside it - indicating an abundance of it in the neighborhood. Cassava is widely cultivated and eaten as a staple food in Andhra Pradesh. The household name for processed cassava is sabu dana or saggu biyyam.
Cassava is widely eaten in Indonesia, and used as a staple food during hard times but has lower status than rice. It is boiled or fried (after steaming), baked under hot coals, or added to kolak dessert. It is also fermented to make peuyeum and tape, a sweet paste which can be mixed with sugar and made into a drink, the alcoholic (and green) es tape. It is available as an alternative to potato crisps. Gaplek, a dried form of cassava, is an important source of calories in the off-season in the limestone hills of southern Java. Their young leaves also eaten as gulai daun singkong (cassava leaves in coconut milk), urap (javanese salad) and as main ingredient in buntil (javanese vegetable rolls).
Cassava is used as animal feed extensively in Asia, South America, Africa, and Europe. Especially in places such as Thailand, China, Nigeria, Brazil, etc.
Cassava hay, is hay which is produced at a young growth stage, 3-4 months and being harvested about 30-45 cm above ground, sun-dried for 1-2 days until having final dry matter of at least 85%. The cassava hay contains high protein content, 20-27% CP and condensed tannins, 1.5-4%. It is used as a good roughage source for dairy, beef, buffalo, goats, sheep by either directing feeding or as a protein source in the concentrate mixtures. More details can be searched from Metha Wanapat AJAS,Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences.
In Africa the cassava mealybug (Phenacoccus manihoti) and cassava green mite (Mononychellus tanajoa) can cause up to 80% crop loss, which is extremely detrimental to the production of subsistence farmers. These pests were rampant in the 1970s and 1980s but were brought under control following the establishment of the Biological Control Centre for Africa. The Centre investigated biological control for cassava pests; two South American natural enemies Apoanagyrus lopezi (a parasitoid wasp) and Typhlodromalus aripo (a predatory mite) were found to effectively control the cassava mealybug and the cassava green mite respectively.
The cassava mosaic virus causes the leaves of the cassava plant to wither, limiting the growth of the root. The virus is spread by the whitefly and by the transplanting of diseased plants into new fields. Sometime in the late 1980s, a mutation occurred in Uganda that made the virus even more harmful, causing the complete loss of leaves. This mutated virus has been spreading at a rate of 50 miles per year, and as of 2005 may be found throughout Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Congo. [2]
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Nederlands (Dutch)
cassave(meel/ -brood), tapioca
Français (French)
n. - (Bot) manioc, (Culin) farine de manioc
Deutsch (German)
n. - (bot.) Maniok, Tapioka (Stärke)
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (φυτολ.) μανιότη(ς), ταπιόκα
Português (Portuguese)
n. - mandioca (f), farinha (f) de mandioca, pão (m) feito de farinha de mandioca
Español (Spanish)
n. - mandioca, tapioca
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - kassavabuske (bot.)
中文（简体） (Chinese (Simplified))
树薯
中文（繁體） (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 樹薯
日本語 (Japanese)
n. - タピオカノキ, カッサバ澱粉
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) نبات المنيهوت
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - קסאבה (צמח)
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