ABSTRACT
Cassava cultivation in Latin America Olivier F. Vilpoux, Denilson de Oliveira Guilherme and Marney Pascoli Cereda, Catholic University of Campo Grande, Brazil
1 Introduction
2 Global and Latin American approaches to cassava production
3 Cassava competitiveness in Latin America
4 Boosting cassava production in Latin America
5 Improving the Latin American starch industry
6 Brazilian cassava flour (farinha)
7 Consumption of boiled and fried cassava
8 Future trends: cassava for animal feed
9 Where to look for further information
10 References
Cassava was domesticated from its wild species ancestors in the New World, probably in South America. Several theories of origin have been posed in the past, including southern Amazon basin, or from the region between the Brazilian and the Venezuelan Amazon rainforest. There may have also been a parallel meso-American origin. Hence, it was natural for the indigenous people throughout the New World to appropriate this plant for food use. The domestication of this species by the indigenous people provided plants with modifications in their roots to store starch. While many of the some 100 wild Manihot species produce starchy storage roots, cassava does so in a highly efficient manner, and is the only cultivated species in the genus. The propagation of these domesticated plants is always executed through the use of stakes (stem pieces), by vegetative propagation, which makes the cultivated plants clones of a single species, Manihot esculenta Crantz. This origin, clearly connected to indigenous cultures, has been presented as an advantage as well as a disadvantage. The clear association to social factors has maintained the production of cassava over the years, but has also been the cause of the difficulty to modernise this crop, out of traditional ties in which it is immersed. A well-known contrast is Thailand, a country with little or no tradition with food use of cassava, but which managed to establish more commercial and industrial avenues of production and use. Other Asian
countries, such as Indonesia and Vietnam, are also increasingly following the industrialbased development of the crop.
