A Green Movement: A Short History of CARROT.
As observed by the presence of carrot seed at prehistoric human habitations 4000 to 5000 years ago, it is speculated that wild carrot seed was used medicinally or as a spice.
Carrot was cultivated and used as a storage root similar to modern carrots in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and perhaps Anatolia beginning in the 10th century. On the basis of historical documents, the first domesticated carrot roots were purple and yellow and recorded in Central Asia, Asia Minor, then in Western Europe and finally in England between the 11th and 15th centuries. Interestingly, orange carrots were not well documented until the 15th and 16th centuries in Europe, indicating that orange carotenoid accumulation may have resulted from a secondary domestication event.
The cultivated carrot is believed to originate from Afghanistan before the 900s, as this area is described as the primary centre of greatest carrot diversity, Turkey being proposed as a secondary centre of origin. The first cultivated carrots exhibited purple or yellow roots. Carrot cultivation spread to Spain in the 1100s. In Europe, genetic improvement led to a wide variety of cultivars. White and orange-coloured carrots were first described in Western Europe in the early 1600s.
-Mr. M&M
INGREDIENTS
