Paul Jones, age 12,of Tekoa, Wash. for his question:

Is tapioca a grown or manufactured product?

Tapioca is the starchy material found in the root of the cassava shrub. We use it to make a creamy pudding treat and sometimes to thicken soups and gravies. In some parts of the world, this starchy food is almost as important as corn is to us. There it is used as flour to make the daily bread.

The cassava is a native plant of tropical South America and Asia.

It is a leafy shrub, sometimes 12 feet high. But its precious store of starch is in its thibk, fleshy roots. These roots may be nine inches thick and three feet long. The plants are grown from cuttings and the roots harvested every year. The roots are mashed, sieved and washed many times before the tapioca starch is extracted. Most of our tapioca comes all the way from Malay or Indonesia