Essay About Tannia

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2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Origin and Distribution
Tannia was originated in tropical America, but currently grown widely as a subsistence food crop in Asia, Africa and Polynesia (Bown, 2000). From five crops which are under sub family aroid the only tannia originated from Central & South America others originated from South-east Asia (Lebot, 2009).
When the Europeans arrived, it was further known to have been grown from Southern Mexico to Bolivia in the Latin America. Only during the 19th century, it spread widely throughout the tropical world. Currently, it is cultivated in tropical and subtropical zones, between latitudes 30⁰ North and 15⁰ South. The main areas of distribution of the crop include the Caribbean (Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, West Indies), Central and South America; USA (Florida, Hawaii), West Africa (Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, Togo), and tropical Asia ( Indonesia, Malaysia, the South Pacific Islands) (Perez, 2010).
Tannia was introduced between the 16th and 17th centuries to Central and West Africa, where it was given the common name of cocoyam because of its resemblance to Colocasia. It was brought by Portuguese slavers into SaoTomé and Principe, where they had important trading bases and was spread further by traders, missionaries and other travelers (Bown, 2000; George, 2011). It was introduced to Ethiopia in 1978 (Amsalu et al., 2008).
2.2 Botany
Tannia is a herbaceous, monocotyledonous, perennial plant, but for practical purposes, it is harvested after 6 -12 months of growth (Castro, 2006; Ramesh et al., 2007; Lebot, 2009). Photo synthetically it follow C-3 pathway (kay, 1987). It can reach up to a height of about 2 m and have a short erect stem, having a corm or main underground stem in the for...

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...l differences on tannia accessions on the length of petiole, leaf blade length and width, and size cormel.
According to Lebot (2009), about 1000 accessions of X. sagittifolium, X. violaceum, X. nigrum, X. brasiliense and X. yucca were collected from different part of the world. The majority was collected from Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana and Togo. Ethiopia with its diverse agro-ecologies and suitable environments, allows the growth of numerous root and tuber crops; mostly in the South and Western parts of the country by smallholder farmers (Asfaw, 2005). Both taro and tannia are grown mostly throughout the hot and humid areas of southwestern Ethiopia. In the area there is a large genetic pool of tannia in farmers’ field and homesteads (Amsalu and Tesfaye, 2006), and more than 80 accessions of tannia were collected from the area (Amsalu et al., 2008).

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