Where do onions grow?

Onions are native to Central Asia or West Asia and are available in many different varieties.

In the ancient Egyptian stone carvings of a thousand years before BC, there were pictures of harvesting onions, which were later transmitted to the Mediterranean. In the Western Han Dynasty, Zhang Yutong passed through the Western Region and brought back many species from the Western Region. There were already records of growing onions in the Western Region. After the discovery of geography, it spread from Europe to the world. In the 16th century, it was introduced to North America. It was introduced to Japan in the 17th century. In the 18th century, "Lingnan Miscellanies" recorded that onions were introduced to Macao by European whites and planted in Guangdong.

According to the information of the Checheng Township Office, a Japanese elementary school teacher who taught at Tamsui in 1912 introduced the onion to Taiwan for the first time. Since 1918, the Agricultural Research Institute of Taiwan’s Governor’s Office has experimented with planting onions throughout Taiwan, but its effectiveness has been poor.

After the end of the Second World War, under the auspices of the Provincial Agriculture and Forestry Department and the Agricultural Rehabilitation Association of the Taiwan Provincial Agricultural Experiment, the varieties of onions were continuously introduced and tested in various parts of Taiwan. It has been successfully planted in Yunlin, Chiayi, Tainan and Pingtung in southern Taiwan. Hengchun, Fenggang and Checheng have become the largest onion producing areas in Taiwan.