[1] Radishes are often used raw as a crunchy salad vegetable with a pungent, slightly spicy flavor, varying in intensity depending on its growing environment.

Radishes owe their sharp flavor to the various chemical compounds produced by the plants, including glucosinolate, myrosinase, and isothiocyanate.

Varieties of radish are now broadly distributed globally, but almost no archeological records are available to help determine their early history and domestication.

[4] However, scientists have tentatively located the origin of Raphanus sativus in Southeast Asia, as this is the only region where truly wild forms have been discovered.

[5] Greek and Roman agriculturalists of the first century AD gave details of small, large, round, long, mild, and sharp varieties.

[citation needed] Asaph the Jew noted that the radish, particularly its leaves, may be useful in traditional medicine to increase mucus.

[7] Radishes are annual or biennial brassicaceous crops grown for their swollen tap roots which can be globular, tapering, or cylindrical.

[9] The flesh of radishes harvested timely is crisp and sweet, but becomes bitter and tough if the vegetable is left in the ground too long.

Radishes grow best in full sun in light, sandy loams, with a soil pH 6.5 to 7.0, but for late-season crops, a clayey-loam is ideal.

[15] After harvesting, radishes can be stored without loss of quality for two or three days at room temperature, and about two months at 0 °C (32 °F) with a relative humidity of 90–95%.

[11] Radishes can be useful as companion plants for many other crops, probably because their pungent odour deters such insect pests as aphids, cucumber beetles, tomato hornworms, squash bugs, and ants.

[20] It has a rough, black skin with hot-flavored, white flesh, is round or irregularly pear shaped,[21] and grows to around 10 cm (4 in) in diameter.

[15][16] The New York Times describes 'Masato Red' and 'Masato Green' varieties as extremely long, well-suited for fall planting and winter storage.

The longer, thinner, and waterier Japanese daikon cultivated mainly for danmuji is referred to as Wae radish(왜무, Waemu) in Korea.

Korean radishes are generally shorter, stouter, and sturdier than daikon, and have pale green shade halfway down from the top.

The rat-tailed radish, an old European variety thought to have come from East Asia centuries ago, has long, thin, curly pods that can exceed 20 cm (8 in) in length.

[26][27][28] In a 100-gram (3+1⁄2-ounce) reference serving, raw radishes provide 66 kilojoules (16 kilocalories) of food energy and have a moderate amount of vitamin C (18% of Daily Value), with other essential nutrients in low content (table).

The most commonly eaten portion is the napiform or fusiform taproot, although the entire plant is edible and the tops can be used as a leaf vegetable.

The raw flesh has a crisp texture and a pungent, peppery flavor, caused by glucosinolates and the enzyme myrosinase, which combine when chewed to form allyl isothiocyanates, also present in mustard, horseradish, and wasabi.

[33] In Mexican cuisine, sliced radishes are used in combination with shredded lettuce as garnish for traditional dishes such as tostadas, sopes, enchiladas and pozole.

This folk art competition uses a large type of radish up to 50 cm (20 in) long and weighing up to 3 kg (7 lb).

Great skill and ingenuity are used to carve these into religious and popular figures, buildings, and other objects, and they are displayed in the town square.