India, July 20 -- The ghosts of who our fruits and vegetables once were still hover in our midst. in the carvings on Egyptian tombs, in Ancient Roman frescoes, and in art works dating to centuries ago. Here, peaches are green; carrots are small, slim and yellow; and the watermelon has white flesh. Over thousands of years, humans have hybridised plants to make them easier to digest, more nutritious, higher in sugars and carbs, or simply better-tasting. Some would become so integral, they would travel the world. Key among these was the apple. It was eaten so widely, on trade routes criss-crossing Central Asia (where it has its roots), its core then tossed to the side to take root where it could, that the genetic material of the average apple today is an undecipherable mishmash, says Robert Spengler, director of paleoethnobotany at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, and author of Fruit from the Sands: The Silk Road Origins of the Foods We Eat (2019). The result: One may plant an apple core and never know what variety the resultant tree will yield. The fruit itself, meanwhile, started out so small that as many as five might have fit in one hand. Today, it is far easier to bioengineer food. We don't have to wait as long or be as uncertain of the result. But this too has a flip side: the loss of genetic diversity. "Putting all our eggs, peaches or rice in one basket is not a risk we should be taking," says Gary Crawford, a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto, Mississauga who has been studying the origins of agricultural plants for over 25 years. As the global economy focuses on financially profitable crops at the expense of resilience and, often, nutrition, it is crucial to appreciate the thousands of years of careful cultivation that went into developing the produce we have today. These are achievements that cannot be replicated overnight, as Crawford puts it. Meanwhile, the changes we make today will continue to unfold for millennia, and could affect how vegetables and fruit look in the future, adds Spengler. There's more on our most dramatic efforts in that direction, in the story alongside. But first, here's a look at how our most common fruits and vegetables got to where they are today....