• Question: is it true that carrots used to be purple, and if it is, how did people make them change colour?

    Asked by fatlouietwin to Damien, Rachael, Simon, Suzi, Tim on 18 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Tim Fosker

      Tim Fosker answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      Hi @fatlouietwin

      I didn’t know about this at all. I did a bit of web surfing and it seems likely that carrots were originally purple and that they changed colour over many generations from a combination of natural mutations and cross-breeding between wild and cultivated carrots. The below site I found is really good.

      http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/history.html

    • Photo: Suzi Gage

      Suzi Gage answered on 18 Jun 2011:

      Hi @fatlouietwin

      There was a man called Gregor Mendel, who was a Monk in Austria in 1800s. He worked out the very first basics of genetic breeding, by using pea plants and working out that by selecting which ones combined to breed the next plant, he could change the colour of the flowers in future generations of the plant. At this point no one knew anything about DNA or the way you inherit half from each parent, but the principle Mendel used was entirely consistent with what we know now about genetics.

      This is the cross-breeding that Tim is talking about.

      Clever Mendel huh?

      Hope this helps!

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