130 free Fruit and Vegetables trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
60 free Fruit and Vegetables trivia questions with answers. This quiz digs into the produce aisle and comes back with surprises. Which everyday salad ingredient is legally a vegetable but botanically a berry? Which fruit was renamed in 1959 to get past customs officers? Which country grows almost all of the world's asparagus and spinach? Expect questions on origins, record-breaking specimens, odd etymologies, plant families that hide in plain sight, and the science of why onions make you cry. It is written for curious eaters, pub-quiz regulars, gardeners and anyone who has ever argued about whether a tomato is a fruit. Difficulty ranges from quick wins to genuinely tough questions about domestication and taxonomy. Every answer was checked against primary and reference sources such as Wikipedia, Guinness World Records and encyclopaedia entries, and each question carries the sentence that supports it, so you can trust the result and settle the argument.
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Q 01In Nix v. Hedden (1893), the Supreme Court ruled that for tariff purposes the tomato is what?
Vegetables
The justices agreed tomatoes are botanically fruits but said the tariff law used the everyday meaning of the words, and tomatoes are served with dinner rather than dessert.
Q 02The likely wild ancestor of the tomato, Solanum pimpinellifolium, is native to which region?
Western South America
The plant may have been domesticated in South America, Mexico or Central America before Spanish ships carried it to Europe in the 16th century.
Q 03Widespread infections of what forced the Gros Michel banana to be replaced by the Cavendish?
Panama disease
The soil fungus that wiped out Gros Michel plantations has a new strain, Tropical Race 4, that now threatens the Cavendish in the same way.
Q 04Cavendish bananas take their name from William Cavendish, who held which English title?
Duke of Devonshire
His head gardener Joseph Paxton grew the plants at Chatsworth House and described them as Musa cavendishii.
Q 05Bananas are very slightly radioactive because of which naturally occurring isotope?
Potassium-40
The informal 'banana equivalent dose' uses one banana as a yardstick for tiny radiation exposures, roughly 0.1 microsievert.
Q 06The earliest domestication of bananas, from seedless Musa banksii plants, took place on which island?
New Guinea
Today the largest producers are India and China, which together grow about a quarter of the world's bananas.
Q 07Botanically, a strawberry is not a true berry. What is it classified as?
An aggregate accessory fruit
The red flesh grows from the flower's receptacle, and the 'seeds' on the outside are actually the individual fruits, called achenes.
Q 08The modern garden strawberry was first bred in the 1750s in which region of France?
Brittany
It came from crossing a North American species with a large-fruited Chilean one, and China now grows about 38 percent of the world's supply.
Q 09Pre-Columbian farmers first domesticated the potato in the highlands around which body of water?
Lake Titicaca
That happened in southern Peru and northwestern Bolivia some 7,000 to 10,000 years ago, and China is now the largest grower.
Q 10Potatoes and tomatoes both belong to the genus Solanum. Which plant family is that genus part of?
The nightshades
Both share the family with peppers, tobacco and deadly nightshade, and green potato skins contain the same class of toxic alkaloids.
Q 11What kind of organism is Phytophthora infestans, the late blight behind the Great Irish Famine?
A fungus-like oomycete
Oomycetes look like moulds but are more closely related to brown algae than to true fungi, which is why ordinary fungicides did little.
Q 12When carrots were first cultivated, which parts of the plant were they grown for?
The leaves and seeds
The aromatic tops were used like an herb, and it was later selection for the swollen root that produced the vegetable we eat today.
Q 13Growers from which country created the stable orange 'Long Orange' carrot in the early 18th century?
The Netherlands
Q 21Before 1959, what was the kiwifruit generally called in English?
Chinese gooseberry
New Zealand exporter Turners & Growers adopted the new name after a US client warned the old one was causing trouble at quarantine.
Q 22Kiwifruit is native to which country, which grew over half of the world's supply in 2023?
China
The first written description dates from the 12th-century Song dynasty, and 100 grams of the fruit supplies more than a full day's vitamin C.
Q 23'Avocado' comes from the Spanish 'aguacate', which in turn derives from which language?
Nahuatl
The original word, ahuacatl, doubled as a euphemism for 'testicle', and the fruit itself is botanically a single-seeded berry.
In the 10th century most cultivated carrots were purple, and the orange colour comes from beta-carotene, which the body turns into vitamin A.
Q 14A WWII rumour claimed British pilots won night battles thanks to carrots improving their eyesight. What was the real reason for their success?
Newly adopted radar
The story gave the RAF a cover for its secret technology, and the myth about carrots and night vision has outlived the war by decades.
Q 15Malus sieversii, the domestic apple's wild ancestor, still grows in which part of the world?
Central Asia
The former name of Kazakhstan's largest city, Alma-Ata, translates as 'father of the apples'.
Q 16Roughly how many known cultivars of apple exist?
Over 7,500
Despite that variety, China alone grows about half of the world's apples, and the fruit belongs to the rose family.
Q 17The modern watermelon was first cultivated in which country?
Sudan
The fruit was being grown in Egypt by 2000 BC, and China now produces almost two-thirds of the world's watermelons.
Q 18Which US state named the watermelon its official state vegetable in 2007?
Oklahoma
The choice was defended on the grounds that watermelons belong to the same family as cucumbers, which nobody disputes are vegetables.
Q 19Which state's official state fruit, chosen in 2009, is the tomato?
Ohio
The same year the state also named the pawpaw its native fruit, so it has two official fruits.
Q 20Which state's official state vegetable, chosen in 1997, is the sweet onion?
Texas
Idaho picked the potato in 2002 and Louisiana the sweet potato in 2003, but the Lone Star State went with its famous 1015 onion.
Q 24Rudolph Hass, who raised the Hass avocado 'mother tree', worked as what?
A mail carrier
Mexico now supplies about a quarter of the world's avocados, and the leaves contain persin, a compound that can be fatal to horses.
Q 25Because its odour can linger for days, the durian is banned by some hotels and public transport services in which part of the world?
Southeast Asia
Singapore and Bangkok are among the cities with such bans, yet Thailand exports more durians than any other country.
Q 26The name 'durian' comes from the Malay word 'duri'. What does it mean?
Thorn
The rind is covered in sharp spikes, and the fruit is native to Borneo, Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula.
Q 27Cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale and kohlrabi are all cultivars of which species?
Brassica oleracea
The wild form grows on the coasts of France, Britain and Spain, and centuries of selection for leaves, buds or stems produced the very different vegetables.
Q 28The Yubari King, one of the world's most expensive fruits, is a cantaloupe grown on which Japanese island?
Hokkaido
In May 2019 the drinks company Pokka paid 5 million yen for a pair at auction, and a 2026 pair went for 5.8 million.
Q 29How much did the heaviest pumpkin on record weigh when twin brothers Ian and Stuart Paton presented it in Berkshire, England, in October 2025?
1,278.8 kg
That is about 2,819 pounds, and botanically the giant is a pepo, a type of berry with a hard rind.
Q 30Rhubarb leaves are poisonous mainly because they contain high levels of which substance?
Oxalic acid
Only the stalks, technically petioles, are eaten; the leaves are a kidney toxin and are cut off before the plant reaches the kitchen.