# 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.

## List of crops

New World crops by plant structure used :
| Grains | little barley, maize, maygrass, wild rice |
| Psuedograins | amaranth, chia, knotweed, goosefoot, quinoa, sunflower, sumpweed (extinct as a crop) |
| Fruit | açaí, acerola, avocado, American blueberry, cashew apple, chayote, cherimoya, American cranberry, chili pepper, curuba, custard apple, Virginia strawberry, feijoa, fox grape, Muscadine grape, guava, huckleberry, jabuticaba, jerivá, jurubeba, macaúba, naranjilla, papaya, pawpaw, passionfruit, peppers, American persimmon, pineapple, pitanga, pitaya, prickly pear, soursop, squashes and pumpkins, sugar-apple, White sapote, Black sapote, Yellow Sapote, Babaco, Achacha, tamarillo, tomato, tomatillo, tucum Nuts: American chestnut, Araucaria, black walnut, Brazil nut, cashew, hickory, pecan, shagbark hickory, vanilla, Chilean Hazelnut, Ice Cream Bean, Peanut |
| Spices | Allspice |
| Seed crops | achiote, guaraná, cocoa bean |
| Beans | common bean, lima bean, peanut, scarlet runner bean, tepary bean |
| Root | arracacha, jicama, canna, cassava, leren, sweet potato, yacón |
| Underground stems (tubers, rhizomes, bulbs etc) | arrowroot, sunroot, camas bulb, hopniss, mashua, oca, potato, ulluco |
| Leaf | agave, coca, tobacco, yerba mate, yucca |
| Fluid | balsam of Peru, chicle, maple syrup, rubber |
| Wood | logwood |
| Fiber | some cotton species |

## 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.
Timeline of cultivation :
| Date | Crops | Location |
| 8000 BCE | Squash | Oaxaca, Mexico |
| 8000–5000 BCE | Potato | Peruvian and Bolivian Andes |
| 6000–4000 BCE | Peppers | Bolivia |
| 5700 BCE | Maize | Guerrero, Mexico |
| 5500 BCE | Peanut | South America |
| 5000 BCE | Avocado | Mexico |
| c. 4200 BCE | Sea-island cotton | Peru |
| 4000 BCE | Common bean | Central America |
| 3400 BCE | Mexican cotton | Tehuacan Valley, Mexico |
| 3300 BCE | Cocoa | Ecuador |
| 3000 BCE | Sunflowers, other beans | Arizona–New Mexico |
| 1500 BCE | Sweet potato | Altiplano Cundiboyacense, Colombia |
| 500 BCE | Tomato | Mexico |

## 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.