A tropical root crop, manioc is also known as cassava, mandioca, aipim, the tapioca plant, and yuca. The term cassava comes from the Arawak word kasabi, whereas the Caribs called the plant yuca (Jones 1959). The word manioc, however, is from maniot in the Tupí language of coastal Brazil; mandioca derives from Mani-óca, or the house of Mani, the Indian woman from whose body grew the manioc plant, according to Indian legends collected in Brazil (Cascudo 1984). Domesticated in Brazil before 1500, Manihot esculenta (Crantz), formerly termed Manihot utilissima, is a member of the spurge family (Euphorbiaceae), which includes the rubber bean and the castor bean (Cock 1985).

The manioc plant is a perennial woody shrub that reaches 5 to 12 feet in height, with leaves of 5 to 7 lobes that grow toward the end of the branches. The leaves are edible and may be cooked like spinach, but in terms of food, the most significant part of the plant is its starchy roots, which often reach 1 to 2 feet in length and 2 to 6 inches in diameter. Several roots radiate like spokes in a wheel from the stem, and each plant may yield up to 8 kilograms of roots (Jones 1959; Cock 1985; Toussaint-Samat 1992).

There are two principal varieties of manioc – the sweet and the bitter. The sweet varieties have a shorter growing season, can be harvested in 6 to 9 months, and then can simply be peeled and eaten as a vegetable without further processing. If not harvested soon after maturity, however, sweet manioc deteriorates rapidly. The bitter varieties require 12 to 18 months to mature but will not spoil if left unharvested for several months. Thus, people can harvest them at their leisure. The main disadvantage to the bitter varieties is that they may contain high levels of cyanogenic glycosides, which can cause prussic-acid poisoning if the roots are not processed properly (Jones 1959; Johns 1990).