Editing Turnip (section)

== History == 
Wild forms of the turnip and its relatives, the [[mustard plant|mustards]] and [[radish]]es, are found over western Asia and Europe. Starting as early as 2000 BCE, related oilseed subspecies of ''Brassica rapa'' like ''oleifera'' may have been domesticated several times from the [[Mediterranean]] to India, though these are not the same turnips cultivated for their roots.<ref name="sanderson">{{cite book |editor1-last=Prance |editor1-first=Ghillean |editor2-last=Nesbitt |editor2-first=Mark |last1=Sanderson |first1=Helen|date=2005 |title=The Cultural History of Plants |publisher=Routledge |page=72 |isbn=0415927463}}</ref> Previous estimates of domestication dates are limited to linguistic analyses of plant names.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Zohary|first1=Daniel|last2=Hopf|first2=Maria|last3=Weiss|first3=Ehud|title=Domestication of plants in the Old World : the origin and spread of domesticated plants in Southwest Asia, Europe, and the Mediterranean Basin|date=2012|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford|isbn=9780199549061|page=139|edition=4th}}</ref>

Edible turnips were first domesticated in [[Central Asia]] several thousand years ago, supported by genetic studies of both wild and domesticated varieties showing Central Asian varieties are the most genetically diverse crops.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last1=McAlvay |first1=Alex C. |last2=Ragsdale |first2=Aaron P. |last3=Mabry |first3=Makenzie E. |last4=Qi |first4=Xinshuai |last5=Bird |first5=Kevin A. |last6=Velasco |first6=Pablo |last7=An |first7=Hong |last8=Pires |first8=J. Chris |last9=Emshwiller |first9=Eve |date=30 April 2021 |title=Brassica rapa domestication: untangling wild and feral forms and convergence of crop morphotypes |url=https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/38/8/3358/6261082 |journal=Molecular Biology and Evolution |volume=38 |issue=8 |pages=3358–3372 |doi=10.1093/molbev/msab108 |pmid=33930151 |pmc=8321528 |via=Oxford Academic}}</ref> Ancient literary references to turnips in Central Asia, and the existence of words for 'turnip' in ancestral languages of the region, also support the turnip as the original domesticated form of ''[[Brassica rapa]]'' subsp. ''rapa''.<ref name=":0" /> It later spread to Europe and East Asia with farmers in both areas later selecting for larger leaves; it subsequently became an important food in the [[Hellenistic]] and [[Roman Empire|Roman]] world.<ref name="sanderson"/> The turnip spread to China, and reached Japan by 700 CE.<ref name="sanderson"/>

Turnips were an important crop in the [[cuisine of Antebellum America]]. They were grown for their greens as well as the roots, and could yield edible greens within a few weeks of planting, making them a staple of new [[plantations]] still in the process of becoming productive. They could be planted as late as the fall and still provide newly arrived settlers with a source of food. The typical southern way of cooking turnip greens was to boil them with a chunk of [[salt pork]]. The [[broth]] obtained from this process was known as [[pot likker]] and was served with crumbled [[Pone (food)|corn pone]], often made from coarse meal when little else was available along the antebellum frontier.<ref>Sam Bowers Hilliard, ''Hog Meat and Hoecake: Food Supply in the Old South, 1840–1860'' (2014).</ref>