The beginning of crop development dates far back into human history and is widely accepted to have its origin in the ‘Fertile Crescent’, a region that today spans part of the countries of Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Turkey and Iran. Recently, new evidence emerged that prehistoric bread-like products were produced in South-west Asia 14,400 years ago [1], which were made from root tubers (Bolboschoenus glaucus) and seeds of wild einkorn (Triticum boeoticum), one of the ancestors of today’s wheat. Interestingly, this pushes back the evidence of bread to at least 4000 years before agriculture emerged. This suggests that early bread-making culture may have fuelled domestication of our first crops [1]. During settlement and the advent of agriculture, humans selected the most favourable plants of the available ancestral types, and this process of co-evolution between plant species and humankind resulted in today’s food crops. Seeds from the best performing plants were retained after harvest and sowed in the next season, leading to a continuous improvement of characteristics favourable for human nutrition and local production. This first form of breeding selection without any enforced crossing represented the main form of plant improvement for several thousands of years, shifting plant characteristics to increase their usefulness [2]. So-called domestication traits were the prerequisite for successful cultivation. A good example was the elimination of the seed dispersal mechanism in cereals like wheat and barley, known as seed shattering. While seed shattering at maturation is essential for wild grasses to disperse and reproduce, this characteristic is undesirable for farming. Therefore, plant genotypes that retained their seeds and thereby showed reduced yield losses were selected in the process of domestication. Because only few plants carried the desirable mutations, the strong selection pressure acted as a genetic bottleneck on the diversity available in our modern crops (Fig. 1a). Considering the extremely long evolution of crops, modern plant breeding has only recently been practiced, mainly after the formulation of Mendel’s Laws of Heredity in 1865. Mendel’s early genetic studies on peas and his resulting theories about inheritance and trait segregation paved the way for targeted crossing between parental genotypes, a practice that underpins modern crop improvement. However, in order to be able to meet the increasing demand for plant-based products, rates of genetic improvement must be doubled by the middle of this century.