By the time the first Europeans arrived in the New World, farmers there were harvesting more than a hundred kinds of edible plants-potatoes, tomatoes, sunflowers, eggplants, avocados, sweet potatoes, peanuts, cashews, pineapples, papaya, guava, yams, manioc {or cassava}, pumpkins, vanilla, a whole slew of beans and squashes, four types of chili peppers, and chocolate, among rather a lot else-not a bad haul. It has been estimated that 60 percent of all the crops grown in the world today originated in the Americas.
( Bill Bryson )
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