Artichoke production in Italy Artichoke production in Italy Artichoke production in Italy has a long history. Italy is the world's largest producer of artichokes. With Spain and France, the three countries produce more than 80% of the world's artichokes. There are two theories as to its origin: artichokes may have come from the Levant, derived from the cardoon or thistle through a cross-fertilization process, while others attribute it to the work of Italian horticulturists. The first record of artichoke cultivation in Italy was during the fifteenth century in Naples, where it was considered a new food species. In 1466, Filippo Strozzi brought the first
Variety of finite semigroups finite group is a variety of finite semigroups, while it is not a subvariety of the variety of (arbitrary) semigroups. Thus, Reiterman theorem show that this set can be defined using profinite identities. And Birkhoff's HSP theorem show that this set can not be defined using identities (of finite words). This illustrates why the definition of variety of finite semigroups use the notion of profinite words and not the notion of identities. We now consider the algebraic definitions of varieties. Requiring that varieties are closed under arbitrary direct product implies that a variety is either trivial or contains infinite structures.