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How can cassava be so toxic, yet still dominate diets in Amazonia? It's all down to Indigenous ingenuity.cassava gardens on the Amazon River and its myriad tributaries in Peru. We have discovered scores of cassava varieties, growers using sophisticated breeding strategies to manage its toxicity, and elaborate methods for processing its dangerous yet nutritious products.One of the most formidable challenges faced by early humans was getting enough to eat.
Today, almost every rural family across the Amazon has a garden. Visit any household and you will find cassava roasting on the fire, being toasted into a chewy flatbread called casabe, fermenting into the beer called masato, and steaming in soups and stews. Before adopting cassava in these roles, though, people had to figure out how to deal with its toxicity.One of cassava's most important strengths, its pest resistance, is provided by a powerful defense system.
It begins with grinding cassava's starchy roots on shredding boards studded with fish teeth, chips of rock or, most often today, a rough sheet of tin. Shredding mimics the chewing of pests, causing the release of the root's cyanide and cyanohydrins. But they drift away into the air, not into the lungs and stomach like when they are eaten.
In addition to inventing new methods for processing cassava, they began keeping track and selectively growing varieties with desirable characteristics, gradually
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