Fruit and Vegetables Trivia
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179 free Fruit and Vegetables trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 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.
30 of 179 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Nix v. Hedden (1893), the US Supreme Court ruled that for tariff purposes tomatoes are what?
Vegetables
Vegetables, unanimously: the justices agreed tomatoes are botanically fruits but said the tariff law used everyday meaning, 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
Western South America: Solanum pimpinellifolium, the currant tomato, grows wild along the coasts of Peru and Ecuador, and Spanish ships carried the domesticated tomato to Europe in the 16th century.
Q 03Widespread infections of what forced the Gros Michel banana to be replaced by the Cavendish?
Panama disease
Panama disease, a soil-borne Fusarium fungus, wiped out Gros Michel plantations by the 1950s; its Tropical Race 4 strain later began attacking the replacement Cavendish in the same way.
Q 04Cavendish bananas take their name from William Cavendish, who held which English title?
Duke of Devonshire
Duke of Devonshire: William Cavendish, the 6th Duke, had his head gardener Joseph Paxton grow the plants at Chatsworth House, where Paxton described them in 1837 as Musa cavendishii.
Q 05Bananas are very slightly radioactive because of which naturally occurring isotope?
Potassium-40
Potassium-40 is a natural radioactive isotope within the potassium bananas are rich in; the informal 'banana equivalent dose' of about 0.1 microsievert uses one banana as a yardstick.
Q 06The earliest domestication of bananas, from seedless Musa banksii plants, took place on which island?
New Guinea
New Guinea: excavations at Kuk Swamp in the highlands show bananas were being cultivated there by about 7,000 years ago, the earliest evidence of banana domestication anywhere.
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
Brittany: the garden strawberry, Fragaria x ananassa, arose there in the 1750s from a cross of the North American Fragaria virginiana with the large-fruited Chilean Fragaria chiloensis.
Q 09Pre-Columbian farmers first domesticated the potato in the highlands around which body of water?
Lake Titicaca
Lake Titicaca: the potato was domesticated in the highlands of southern Peru and northwestern Bolivia around that lake some 7,000 to 10,000 years ago, from wild Solanum species.
Q 10Which plant family contains the genus Solanum, home to both potatoes and tomatoes?
The nightshades
The nightshades, Solanaceae, also include 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
A fungus-like oomycete: oomycetes resemble moulds but are closer kin to brown algae than to true fungi, so many fungicides aimed at true fungi work poorly against late blight.
Q 12When carrots were first cultivated, which parts of the plant were they grown for?
The leaves and seeds
The leaves and seeds: carrots were first grown in Persia for their aromatic foliage and seeds, used like herbs and spices; later selection for the swollen root produced the vegetable eaten today.
Q 13Growers from which country created the stable orange 'Long Orange' carrot in the early 18th century?
Q 21Before 1959, what was the kiwifruit generally called in English?
Chinese gooseberry
Chinese gooseberry: in 1959 the New Zealand exporter Turners & Growers renamed it kiwifruit after the national bird, because 'Chinese' carried Cold War baggage in the US and gooseberries drew import duties.
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
Nahuatl: the Aztec language's word ahuacatl became Spanish aguacate and then English avocado; the fruit itself is botanically a single-seeded berry.
The Netherlands
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 14What was the real reason for the WWII RAF night-fighter successes credited to carrots?
Newly adopted radar
Newly adopted radar: airborne interception radar let RAF night fighters find German bombers in the dark, and the carrot story gave that secret a cover; the night-vision myth has outlived the war.
Q 15Malus sieversii, the domestic apple's wild ancestor, still grows in which part of the world?
Central Asia
Central Asia: Malus sieversii grows wild in the Tian Shan mountains of Kazakhstan, whose largest city Almaty, formerly Alma-Ata, has a name translating 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
Sudan: genome studies published in 2021 showed the Kordofan melon of Sudan is the closest wild relative of the domesticated watermelon, which Egyptians were already growing by about 2000 BC.
Q 18Which US state named the watermelon its official state vegetable in 2007?
Oklahoma
Oklahoma: in 2007 its legislature named the watermelon the state vegetable, honouring the Rush Springs Watermelon Festival and arguing that watermelons are kin to cucumbers and gourds.
Q 19Which state's official state fruit, chosen in 2009, is the tomato?
Ohio
Ohio: the state named the tomato its official fruit in 2009, the same year it made the pawpaw its official native fruit, leaving it with two official fruits.
Q 20Which state's official state vegetable, chosen in 1997, is the sweet onion?
Texas
Texas named the sweet onion its state vegetable in 1997, honouring the 1015 onion bred at Texas A&M; Idaho picked the potato in 2002 and Louisiana the sweet potato in 2003.
Q 24Rudolph Hass, who raised the Hass avocado 'mother tree', worked as what?
A mail carrier
A mail carrier: Rudolph Hass, a Californian postman, planted the mother tree in La Habra Heights and patented the Hass avocado in 1935; every Hass avocado descends from that one tree.
Q 25Because its smell can linger for days, the durian is banned by some hotels and public transport in which region?
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia: Singapore's MRT trains and many hotels in Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur ban the fruit, whose smell detractors have compared to sewage and gym socks.
Q 26What does 'duri', the Malay root of the word 'durian', mean?
Thorn
Thorn: 'duri' is Malay for thorn, fitting a rind covered in sharp spikes; 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
Brassica oleracea: wild cabbage grows on the coasts of western Europe, and centuries of selection for leaves, buds or stems turned one species into these very different vegetables.
Q 28The Yubari King, one of the world's most expensive fruits, is a cantaloupe grown on which Japanese island?
Hokkaido
Hokkaido: the Yubari King is grown around the town of Yubari on Japan's northern island, and in May 2019 the drinks company Pokka Sapporo paid 5 million yen for a pair at auction.
Q 29Record-breaking giant pumpkins such as the Atlantic Giant belong to which Cucurbita species?
Cucurbita maxima
Cucurbita maxima: the Dill's Atlantic Giant cultivar behind modern world-record pumpkins is a C. maxima squash, a species that also includes Hubbard and buttercup squashes.
Q 30Rhubarb leaves are poisonous mainly because they contain high levels of which substance?
Oxalic acid
Oxalic acid: rhubarb leaves hold enough of it to damage the kidneys, so only the stalks, technically petioles, are eaten and the leaves are cut off before the plant reaches the kitchen.