Beauty, Stealth, and Disease

L. (pep-permint). The leading countries in mint production are India, the United States, China, and Brazil. In India, mint is culti-vated in an area of more than 150,000 ha with estimated production of 15,000,000 kg of essential oil, which accounts for about 80% of the world menthol mint pro-duction (Table 1; 5). In the United States, the cultivated area is about 50,000 ha, with peppermint representing about 80% and spearmint 20% of the production area and the crop value. Oregon and Washington are the largest producers followed by Idaho, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Michigan (Table 2; 84). Other mint species also are grown widely for the food, medicinal, and land-scape trades. The USDA Agricultural Research Ser-vice (ARS) maintains a living collection of world