Domesticated

Pisum sativum

Pea

Pisum sativum, better known as pea, is a herbaceous plant species that belongs to the legume family. Originally from the Mediterranean region, the pea is an ancient crop that was domesticated more than 10,000 years ago. It has been grown and transported around the world for millennia, in part because it’s nutrient rich and potentially nonperishable. As a leguminous plant, the pea develops a symbiotic relationship with bacteria in its roots, which leads to the conversion of Nitrogen that’s in the air into a resource for plants in the soil. This process, named nitrogen fixation, represents vital transformation.

Cicer arietinum

Chickpea

Cicer arietinum, also known as chickpea, originates from Western Asia (or the Middle East), but is cultivated in more than 50 countries and has more than 3 thousand varieties. Chickpeas are used in the cuisine of many cultures around the world, as they are considered a rich source of vegetable protein and have nutritional properties that are highly beneficial to human health. The region called the Fertile Crescent, place of origin of Cicer arietinum more than 10 thousand years ago, is considered a cradle of human civilization. The coiner of this term began an era of archaeological research focused on the region in 1919, which questioned the Western theory of the time that human civilization was born in Europe. Today, this theory is also critically examined, as it has fueled narratives that if Europe is not the cradle of civilization, it is its pinnacle. While defining what is considered ‘civilized’ is a subjective exercise, this region called the Fertile Crescent, Mesopotamia, or, nowadays, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and other neighboring countries, retains an objectively exceptional history. On fertile lands, which generate surplus agriculture, society was able to flourish culturally, and develop complex agricultural and urban structures.

Passiflora ambigua

Injo passionflower

The Passiflora botanical family, of which passion fruit is a part, is made up of more than 520 species, most of them originating from Tropical America. Brazil has the greatest genetic diversity of this family of plants, where more than 140 different species of passion fruit can be found and more than 80 of them are endemic to this territory. Passion fruit pollination relies on bees of the Bombus genus, and this symbiosis between the two organisms demonstrates the coevolution of these species. Butterflies also contribute to the genetic formation of the Passiflora family, because when choosing where to feed and lay eggs, they develop a preference for the leaf shape of the most abundant variety of passionflower in the location. In this way, the rarest genetic variety is protected.

Luffa aegyptiaca

Sponge gourd

The Luffa aegyptiaca is from the same family as the cucumber, watermelon and pumpkin, called Cucurbitaceae. It differs from other members because its fruit, when peeled and dried, can be used as plant-based sponge – a biodegradable alternative to kitchen sponges. Like the other members of this family, the Sponge gourd is a rustic vine that produces large fruits. Throughout Brazil, it is present in many rural backyards, as it plays a useful role in the home and as a source of income. For practitioners of African diasporic religions, such as Umbanda and Candomblé, this loofah is used for ritualistic herbal body washes.

Coffea sp.

Coffee

Humanity has been in a relationship with coffee for over a millennium. This relationship began in the region that is now known as Ethiopia, in the 9th century, when a shepherd named Kaldi noticed that after eating the red fruits of a wild bush, his goats became more active and did not sleep at night. Kaldi then picked and took these fruits to a religious leader, and it was in this kind of monastery that coffee became the most consumed drink in the world. The transformation of this magnificent plant into a drink was initiated by monks and was consumed ritualistically. In a way, it still is today. Coffee was the drink of devotees in rituals of Sufi Islamic mysticism in Yemen. Kave, or "Arabian wine", was popularized throughout the Arab world in a cultural context that prohibited the consumption of alcohol but embraced the stimulation of caffeine. With the expansion of the Arab trade and the Ottoman Empire, coffee consumption followed these routes of propagation around the world. This era of expansion was called the Islamic Renaissance or Golden Age, and it lasted more than half a millennium, between the 8th and 15th centuries. During this period, there was a civilizational and agricultural boom, where literature, navigation and technologies saw unprecedented development – stimulated by the avid consumption of coffee. To ensure the monopoly of this highly demanded product by the West, Arab merchants sold roasted coffee beans, thus avoiding their planting outside Arab domains. It was not until 1616, almost a millennium after Kaldi noticed the change in behavior of his goats, that the first coffee plant was smuggled out of the port of Mokha, in Yemen. Dutch navigators took a seedling to one of their colonies on the island of Java, now part of Indonesia, where they successfully cultivated it and created the coffee variety called Mocca or Mocha Java. About a hundred years after this smuggling by the Dutch, the French court finds a coffee seedling at the botanical garden in Amsterdam. A seedling of this plant is then taken to the island of Martinique in 1730, where the first French coffee plantations are cultivated, and coffee begins to be exported to Europe. The beginning of the relationship between the Arab civilization and coffee corresponds with the beginning of the golden age of the Islamic world. That era comes to an end as the seed of this plant is used by other peoples in building their own empires.

Oryza sativa

Upland rice

Upland rice is one of the oldest domesticated species in the world. In China, between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago, the Yangtze River Valley hosted Asian rice alongside millet, and contributed to the expansion of the Chinese population toward high, arid territories, to which these plants were able to adapt. This “double cultivation system” enabled not only population expansion and growth, but also “social complexity”, where cultural, spiritual, architectural and linguistic practices were elaborated and refined. In Brazil, this creole rice adapted to the climate of the North and Northeast regions, and was absorbed into its culinary culture in typical dishes such as rice pudding and garimpeiro risotto. In Santa Catarina, in Southern Brazil, protecting the genetic diversity of this rice not only represents a tradition, but also “food security of rural families”. The Landless Workers Movement in Brazil, which fights for agrarian reform, is the largest producer of organic rice in Latin America. This specimen was acquired from a seed guardian specializing in creole seed genetics.

Theobroma cacao

Cacao

Theobroma cacao, popularly known as cacao, is a species of tree of the Malvaceae family, originating in the tropical region of South America. Cocoa is widely cultivated in several countries with a humid tropical climate, including Brazil, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ghana and Indonesia. By indigenous civilizations of Central America and Mexico, this plant was consumed as a stimulating drink, called tchocolatl. In Aztec mythology, the cacao tree was a gift, or even a manifestation, of the deity Quetzalcoatl to human beings. But it is the Amazon rainforest that has the oldest archaeological sites indicative of extensive cacao plantations, dating back to the Holocene period. In Brazil, cocoa is mainly cultivated in the states of Bahia, Pará and Espírito Santo, and is a significant source of income. Within the field of regenerative agriculture, cocoa is a key species because it can be grown in the shade of other trees. This allows integrated cultivation into already consolidated forests, without the need to cut down existing trees for land clearings.