Origins and history of Broccoli

The origin of broccoli consumption is associated with the domestication of different sprouts. Although sporadic consumption of broccoli originated somewhere in the North-western Europe between 8000 and 5000 BC, is in the Eastern Mediterranean where, for most authors, lies the birth of their crop. There about 800 BC, in modern Turkey, the Etruscan civilization grew and ate the leaves and inflorescences of different cabbage that are supposed intermediate forms between turnip, cabbage and broccoli.

The Romans spread the broccoli for the entire Mediterranean basin, remaining permanently established in isolation but in different places today.

In the early nineteenth century in North America, Thomas Jefferson sows broccoli in his garden in Virginia.The increasing demand for healthy products accelerates implantation during the second half of the twentieth century in the U.S., Japan and North Europe are the current major consumers of broccoli. Its development in the world has just begun.