Our ancestors would have had trouble recognising some of the fruits and vegetables that we are familiar with today.
Humans have altered plants to the extent that they would never survive in the wild without human care, says Bruce Chasey from the Biotechnology Center at the University of Illinois.
“Plants such as strawberries, wheat, cabbage, corn, and almost all the rest of our crops descended from ancestors that were nothing like strawberries or wheat or corn from back in the day,” he wrote in a 2007 paper.
Technologies such as selective breeding and genetically modifying plants have been used to improve their look, taste, nutritional value, durability and to make them more resistant to diseases and pests.
