What is Taro?

What is Taro?

Colacasia esculenta is the species designation for a group of plants in the Araceae (aka Arum) family. Within this family, there are some edible root crops, one of which is commonly called taro. Colocasia esculenta also represents a wide range of landscaping plants often called Elephant Ears. In addition, the common name taro is sometimes ascribed to Xanthosoma sagittifolium. The two species are somewhat similar in growth, and their starchy corms are used similarly, so the confusion is easily understood. The broad botanical distinction is that Colocasia esculenta is native to Southeast Asia, while Xanthosoma sagittifolium is native to tropical America, leading to a Eurocentric description of Old World Taro vs New World Taro. An extremely important difference for Utopian Seed Project’s work, and this report, is that Colocasia esculenta has proven easy to cultivate and produce, while Xanthosoma sagittifolium grows vegetatively, but produces little in the way of harvestable yield. For the rest of this report, we will refer to taro with the understanding that we are talking about Colocasia esculenta.

A field of taro (Colocasia esculenta)

Taro is grown across many tropical and subtropical parts of the world. The FAO reported that 18 million tonnes of taro were produced worldwide in 2022. As a culinary crop, the primary yield is usually the underground corms and cormels, but the leaves and petioles are also eaten. All parts of taro must be cooked before eating because of the presence of calcium oxalate raphide crystals, which can cause intense irritation when consumed raw or under cooked. As a crop that was domesticated as much as 5,000 years ago, taro has a wide range of culinary applications. A 2023 paper titled, Taro Roots: An Underexploited Root Crop, with lead researchers from North Carolina A&T, noted, “Considering the sustainability and high nutritional value of taro roots, it is worth exploring their potential to thrive in warmer regions of the USA.” This report focuses on taro as a diversified crop for small-scale market farmers, but there is broader potential still to be explored.

Taro is described as a single polymorphic species, with most horticulturists further breaking the species into two botanical varieties - C. esculenta var. esculenta and C. esculenta var. antiquorum. A report by the Taro Network for Southeast Asia and Oceania (TANSAO) found the described taxonomic differences unhelpful in distinguishing varieties and preferred a system of named cultivars and cultivar groups. While Utopian Seed Project claims no taxonomic expertise about taro, we have internally broken our taro into two groups that we have described as Tropical Taro (a large corm and a smaller number of cormels, aka Dasheen Taro) and Temperate Taro (a high number of small cormels, aka Eddoe Taro). The descriptions in Table 1 closely align with our experience of two distinct taro types, but we have not done further work to identify them with confidence.

Annotated parts of a taro plant

Source: Fang, Q., Matthews, P. J., Grimaldi, I. M., De Jong, H., Van De Belt, J., Schranz, M. E., & Van Andel, T. (2024). The invisible tropical tuber crop: edible aroids (Araceae) sold as “Tajer” in the Netherlands. Economic Botany. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12231-024-09624-y

Table 1. Characteristics differences between Colocasia esculenta var. esculenta and var. antiquorum.

Characteristic	Colocasia esculenta var. esculenta	Colocasia esculenta var. antiquorum
Geographic origin	SE Asia (including India)	Developed and selected in China and Japan after introduction from Southeast Asia
Geographic distribution	Polynesia, Southern China, Eastern Mediterranean, Egypt, Africa, West Indies, Trinidad	East Asia, Japan, Northern China, West Indies, Puerto Rico, Trinidad, Hawaii, Southern USA
Uses	Mainly, large corm and petioles are used for food	Mainly, small cormels are used for food. In some varieties, the main corm is acrid and inedible. Some cormels are practically free of acridity.
Corm size and number of cormels	Large main corm, cylindrical, edible, and 4–8 sucker cormels	Small to medium-sized main corm and a large number of edible cormels (15–20 or more)
Parts used	Main corm, leaves, and petioles used for food	Small cormels used for food

Source: Farm and Forestry Production and Marketing Profile for Taro by Harley I. Manner and Mary Taylor