Lance Cheung/U.S. Department of Agriculture

Christopher Columbus's "discovery" of the Americas in 1492 led to the introduction of many novel crops to Europe and subsequently to European colonies in Asia and Africa, forever changing the global food landscape. Although it was the European explorers and colonizers who transported foods from the New World to the Old, the native peoples who domesticated these plants over millennia have largely been overlooked by history. The following is a list of some of the domesticated crops we owe to the original peoples of the New World.