Europe
Whose returning soldiers would have encountered rice on their expeditions to Asia?
Rice
Rice was known to the Classical world, being imported from Egypt, and perhaps west Asia. It was known to Greece by returning soldiers from Alexander the Great's military expedition to Asia. Large deposits of rice from the first century A.D. have been found in Roman camps in Germany. The Moors brought Asiatic rice to the Iberian Peninsula in the 10th century. Records indicate it was grown in Valencia and Majorca. In Majorca, rice cultivation seems to have stopped after the Christian conquest, although historians are not certain. Muslims also brought rice to Sicily, where it was an important crop long before it is noted in the plain of Pisa (1468) or in the Lombard plain (1475), where its cultivation was promoted by Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, and demonstrated in his model farms. After the 15th century, rice spread throughout Italy and then France, later propagating to all the continents during the age of European exploration. In European Russia, a short-grain, starchy rice similar to the Italian varieties, has been grown in the Krasnodar Krai, and known in Russia as "Kuban Rice" or "Krasnodar Rice". In the Russian Far East several "japonica" cultivars are grown in Primorye around the Khanka lake. Increasing scale of rice production in the region has recently brought criticism towards growers' alleged bad practices in regards to the environment.