Question

Wild mustard (Brassica oleracea) has given rise to several types of vegetables through
A) Natural selection
B) Artificial selection
C) Selective breeding
D) Both B and C

Answer 1

Hint:Brassica oleracea is a wild cabbage that is an uncultivated form. This one species includes cabbage, collards, broccoli, kohlrabi, kale, brussels, and sprouts cauliflower. Each of them is chosen for particular traits like flower buds, large leaves, and edible stems; and belongs to family brassicaceae.

Complete answer
To answer this question we have to know about artificial selection and selective breeding. These are the processes in which humans consciously select for or against specific characteristics in species. Artificial selection has allowed the new crops with desirable characteristics to be produced from a common ancestor. In addition, it can be propagated asexually by grafting, encouraging runners, and taking cuttings, or by layering once a plant is grown with the hybridization of alleles for a desired phenotype.

All variants of Brassica oleracea are interfertile, resulting in a variety of hybrids that are gaining in popularity. By artificial selection, man has produced many crop plants like broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kohlrabi etc. from a common wild cabbage species by selective breeding and artificial selection.

Hence the correct answer is option (D).

Note:The Brassica oleracea family is just one example of plant genetics being modified by humans. It is a biennial plant that, at the end of its second summer before dying, uses food stocks stored over the winter in its rosette of leaves to grow a spike of a few yellow flowers. These nutritious leaves are now valuable food crops in most of the world for their domesticated variants. The various cultivators were created by selecting and breeding plants with larger leaves or buds.