The National Geographic Magazine, sometime before 1969, and possibly
after 1950 publshed an article by someone listing origin of crops and
vegetables in various countries and regions of the world. For exampe
Mexico grew corn and hot pepper for the first time ever, India grew
Okra and Rice for the first time. I would like to have a reference to
that National Geographic article, and the menas of obtaining a copy of
that article.

Hello niloo-ga,

I believe that the answer to your question is the article "Our
Vegetable Travellers", published in the August 1949 edition of
National Geographic Magazine.  From their online index, here is the
reference:

Title: Our Vegetable Travelers  
Date: Aug. 1949  
Pages: 145-217  
  
Contributor(s): Boswell, Victor R. Author, Bostelmann, Else Artist  

I found the reference first by searching the Magazine's index, at the
following URL:

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/publications/

Since your date range was quite vague, I ended up browsing the
"agriculture" and "vegetable" categories by date, and came across that
promising title.  Since I was not sure that was the correct article, I
then did a Google search with the following terms:

"national geographic okra"

I was very lucky there, because the first hit was to none other than
"Our Vegetable Travellers", which has miraculously been reproduced on
a site that is not affiliated with the Magazine.

So, to answer the second part of your question, you can of course
order the back issue from National Geographic, if they have it in
stock.  You can also get the whole magazine, from its inception, on
CD-ROM (from Amazon, say,
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000077CE8/qid=1036177473/sr=8-16/ref=sr_8_16/103-3830672-8007069?v=glance&n=507846).
Or, you can go to this site to have the article at your fingertips:

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/plantanswers/publications/vegetabletravelers/

I hope this answers your question, and thanks for asking!

-- tomo-ga

---

Clarification of Answer by tomo-ga on 01 Nov 2002 11:09 PST

Okay, I just had to add this.  "Okra" and "gumbo" are the same thing. 
Go figure!

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/plantanswers/publications/vegetabletravelers/okra.html

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to find this site.

-- tomo-ga

I got a good answer. I read the referenced article a long time ago and
do not remember everything. However, the answer is satisfactory.

The book "Guns, Germs and Steel" gives an excellent account of the
domestication of crops and how they influenced the development of
societies in different parts of the world.  I don't recall the author,
but he has a background in botany and sociology.  An excellent read.

I checked Amazon.com The author is Jared Diamond I will try to borrow
the book from the local University Library. Thank You.

Be wary of the descriptions on the website.  A lot has changed in 50
years of plant genetics.  The description of corn domestication and
ancient history is very very poor, for example, and represents
hypotheses long since disproven.  An excellent and much more modern
source for such research (which is itself now 10 years out of date) is
The Evolution of Crop Plants, edited by Smartt and Simmonds.