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
Rational variety Rational variety In mathematics, a rational variety is an algebraic variety, over a given field "K", which is birationally equivalent to a projective space of some dimension over "K". This means that its function field is isomorphic to the field of all rational functions for some set formula_2 of indeterminates, where "d" is the dimension of the variety. Let "V" be an affine algebraic variety of dimension "d" defined by a prime ideal "I"=⟨"f", ..., "f"⟩ in formula_3. If "V" is rational, then there are "n"+1 polynomials "g", ..., "g" in formula_4 such that formula_5 In order words, we have