What are some interesting things to learn?

1• CORN

• Corn is a great example of how we can significantly change a vegetable over time. • Corn comes from a Mexican Grass called teocinte. It is small ,skinny and has very few kernels in it. Back then this kernels were very hard to reach at they had a very hard shell around it and therefore had to be hit with a hard object to peel it. Also the taste of the kernels was not that appealing and was much more like a raw potato. • Humans breed likable tescinte grass who had more kernels in it and subsequently this changed to the corn we see today. The changed corn is having more kernels and has 4 times more sugar and is easy to peel and much larger than the old version. 2. Avocado

• Wild avocados were very small . Roughly 3 inches in diameter and pit of wild avacado takes all the space and a little room is left for the green flesh. It will take 10 wild avacados to get the same amount of flesh of single version of modern avocado. Also it doesn't taste very good as it was a bit rougher and grittier. • Through selectively breeding ,we get the avocado which has current flesh and is much larger. 3. Eggplant

• The old version of eggplant is completely unrecognisable from the new one. It came in variety of shapes but mostly round. The name eggplant comes from the fact that they were always whitr and round and hence looking like eggs from a plant. They ranged in different colours like yellow, white and even blue. Earlier version had spines. The domestication of eggplant first began in India, China and Thailand. It was initially used just for medicinal purposes because of the bitter after taste . • Through selective breeding arrive at the modern version eggplant which is purple and oblong in shape. Also the spines have disappeared to some extent. 4. Strawberry • In all the above mentioned food , the modern version gave us a better version of the old one. But opposite has happened in case of wild strawberries. The older version also known as frageria vesca ,tasted much sweeter and is a better version of the modern strawberries. ● So the question is why did they lose the good qualities of a strawberry? • Many other factors started coming into the play influencing these fruits . The farmers started favouring size, resistance to disease and better and bigger appearance which ended up decreasing the taste. • Modern strawberry actually started to take shape when a French spy brought the Chilean version of strawberry to France. This variation of fruit was significantly bigger than the one grown in Europe at the time. The 2 species were crossed and gave rise to the modern strawberries.

● Seeds or Fruits?

• The seed you see in strawberry is actually achenes. They are themselves tiny fruits with tiny seeds inside them.

5. Tomatoes •Tomatoes are 1000 years old. The evolution of tomatoes began in 2 stages.

First there were wild ancestors of tomatoes which were very small in size similar to berries and came in bunch of different colours like yellow,green and purple. Its said that the first cultivated tomato was small and yellow and hence were called as The Golden Apple. These wild tomatoes after a large span of rome evolved into cherry tomatoe.

• From cherry humans developed red tomatoes which is the most recognisable form today.

•The changes were not all good because due to all evolution process the tomato lost some of its genes that created sugar making it less flavourful. 6. Carrots

• Carrots looked very different from our today ones. They very barely recognisable . They were found in Persia and where white or puple in colour and thin and forked in shape. It had a powerful flavour.

• The seeds of the carrot made its way to Europe where they selectively breed them over centuries to reduce their bitterness and increase sweetness and size. 7. Banana (Now this is very interesting)

• The bananas were found in Papua New Guinea and are believed to be 1000 years old. • In each year,humans consume an estimated 100 billion bananas making it the world's largest crop after wheat ,rice and corn. But bananas weren't always big bright and yellow. • Old bananas were very hard, large and had tough seeds which spread inside the skin and because of the hard seeds the banana was inedible. It is believed that humans cooked it before eating and then started consuming it otherwise humans won't start cultivating it in the first place. ● Cautionary tale of 'Big Mike' One of the most prominent examples of genetic vulnerability comes from the banana itself. Up until the 1960s, Gros Michel, or "Big Mike," was the prime variety grown in commercial plantations. But Big Mike's popularity led to its doom, when a pandemic whipped through these plantations during the 1950s and '60's. A fungal disease called Fusarium wilt or Panama disease nearly wiped out the Gros Michel and brought the global banana export industry to the brink of collapse. And hence when came the now version of bananas known as Cavendish Banana which is a hybrid of two species i.e Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana. • But the Cavendish unfortunately has its own weaknesses—most prominently susceptibility to a disease called Black Sigatoka. The fungus Pseudocercospora fijiensis attacks the plants' leaves, causing cell death that affects photosynthesis and leads to a reduction in fruit production and quality. Cavendish bananas are resistant to those devastating Fusarium wilt Race 1 strains, so were able to replace the Gros Michel when it fell to the disease. 8. Watermelon

• Watermelon is known since millennia. They have changed drastically , they have been found cultivating in egypt 5000 years ago. The old version is unrecognisable and was fractionable in size ,measuring 2 inches in diameter and extremely bitter. • Overtime cultivating ,moulded the watermelon into the bigger and sweet and juicy version which is 1500 times more bigger.