ABSTRACT
The following four tables summarize categories of food use and principal production areas for the 100 exotic food plants examined in this book. As detailed in Table 2.1 and summarized in Tables 2.2 and 2.3, 31% of the plants are used principally as sources of fruits, 28% as sources of vegetables, and 20% as sources of spices. Although they are the world’s most important food plants, cereals and pseudocereals (plants not in the grass family that produce grain) are excluded from this book because they are too well known to be considered “exotic” (for information on tropical and semitropical cereals and pseudocereals, see Small, 2009, cited in Chapter 1). As shown in Table 2.4, 90% of the principal commercial production areas of the crops examined in this book are in tropical and/or subtropical areas, whereas just 10% are in temperate areas; more than half of the crops are raised on several continents, with Asia being the predominant source of exotic crops discussed in this book.
