Manihot esculenta, commonly called cassava, manioc, or yuca (among numerous regional names), is a woody shrub of the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae, native to South America, from Brazil, Paraguay and parts of the Andes.

Although a perennial plant, cassava is extensively cultivated in tropical and subtropical regions as an annual crop for its edible starchy tuberous root.

Cassava is the third-largest source of carbohydrates in food in the tropics, after rice and maize, making it an important staple; more than 500 million people depend on it.

[9] The genome shows abundant novel gene loci with enriched functionality related to chromatin organization, meristem development, and cell responses.

Despite high gene synteny, the HiFi genome assembly revealed extensive chromosome rearrangements and abundant intra-genomic and inter-genomic divergent sequences, with significant structural variations mostly related to long terminal repeat retrotransposons.

[14] It became a staple food of the native populations of northern South America, southern Mesoamerica, and the Taino people in the Caribbean islands, who grew it using a high-yielding form of shifting agriculture by the time of European contact in 1492.

They much preferred foods from Spain, specifically wheat bread, olive oil, red wine, and meat, and considered maize and cassava damaging to Europeans.

[18] Ships departing to Europe from Cuban ports such as Havana, Santiago, Bayamo, and Baracoa carried goods to Spain, but sailors needed to be provisioned for the voyage.

Around the same period, it was introduced to Asia through Columbian Exchange by Portuguese and Spanish traders, who planted it in their colonies in Goa, Malacca, Eastern Indonesia, Timor and the Philippines.

While it is a valued food staple in parts of eastern Indonesia, it is primarily cultivated for starch extraction and bio-fuel production in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

This description definitely holds in Africa and parts of South America; in Asian countries such as Vietnam fresh cassava barely features in human diets.

[24] Cassava was introduced to East Africa around 1850 by Arab and European settlers, who promoted its cultivation as a reliable crop to mitigate the effects of drought and famine.

[25] There is a legend that cassava was introduced in 1880–1885 to the South Indian state of Kerala by the King of Travancore, Vishakham Thirunal Maharaja, after a great famine hit the kingdom, as a substitute for rice.

[34][35] One approach used gamma rays to try to silence a gene involved in triggering deterioration; another strategy selected for plentiful carotenoids, antioxidants which may help to reduce oxidization after harvest.

[35] Cassava is subject to pests from multiple taxonomic groups, including nematodes, and insects, as well as diseases caused by viruses, bacteria, and fungi.

[41] Although the ongoing CMD pandemic affects both East and Central Africa, Legg et al. found that these two areas have two distinct subpopulations of the vector, Bemisia tabaci whiteflies.

Several fungi bring about significant crop losses, one of the most serious being cassava root rot; the pathogens involved are species of Phytophthora, the genus which causes potato blight.

[36][48][49] Nematode pests of cassava are thought to cause harms ranging from negligible to seriously damaging,[50][51][52] making the choice of management methods difficult.

[66] Cassava yields a large amount of food energy per unit area of land per day – 1,000,000 kJ/ha (250,000 kcal/ha), as compared with 650,000 kJ/ha (156,000 kcal/ha) for rice, 460,000 kJ/ha (110,000 kcal/ha) for wheat and 840,000 kJ/ha (200,000 kcal/ha) for maize.

[68] Cassava plays a particularly important role in agriculture in developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, because it does well on poor soils and with low rainfall, and because it is a perennial that can be harvested as required.

[76][77] Symptoms of acute cyanide intoxication appear four or more hours after ingesting raw or poorly processed cassava: vertigo, vomiting, goiter, ataxia, partial paralysis, collapse, and death.

[78][75] For example, during the shortages in Venezuela in the late 2010s, dozens of deaths were reported due to Venezuelans resorting to eating bitter cassava in order to curb starvation.

Industrial production of cassava flour, even at the cottage level, may generate enough cyanide and cyanogenic glycosides in the effluents to have a severe environmental impact.

In Brazil, farofa, a dry meal made from cooked powdered cassava, is roasted in butter, eaten as a side dish, or sprinkled on other food.

[99] In that time, about 83% of the cyanogenic glycosides are broken down by linamarase; the resulting hydrogen cyanide escapes to the atmosphere, making the flour safe for consumption the same evening.

In Nigeria and several other west African countries, including Ghana, Cameroon, Benin, Togo, Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso, they are usually grated and lightly fried in palm oil to preserve them.

[100] The reliance on cassava as a food source and the resulting exposure to the goitrogenic effects of thiocyanate has been responsible for the endemic goiters seen in the Akoko area of southwestern Nigeria.

[101][102] Bioengineering has been applied to grow cassava with lower cyanogenic glycosides combined with fortification of vitamin A, iron and protein to improve the nutrition of people in sub-Saharan Africa.

[105] The juice is boiled until it is reduced by half in volume,[106] to the consistency of molasses[107] and flavored with spices—including cloves, cinnamon, salt, sugar, and cayenne pepper.

[121] In Java, a myth relates that food derives from the body of Dewi Teknowati, who killed herself rather than accept the advances of the god Batara Guru.