Editing Botany (section)

=== Human nutrition ===
{{Further|Human nutrition}}
[[File:Brown rice.jpg|right|thumb|alt=grains of brown rice, a staple food|The food we eat comes directly or indirectly from plants such as rice.]]
Virtually all staple foods come either directly from [[primary production]] by plants, or indirectly from animals that eat them.{{sfn|Ben-Menahem|2009|pp = 5367–5368}} Plants and other photosynthetic organisms are at the base of most [[food chain]]s because they use the energy from the sun and nutrients from the soil and atmosphere, converting them into a form that can be used by animals. This is what ecologists call the first [[trophic level]].{{sfn|Butz|2007|pp = 534–553}} The modern forms of the major [[staple food]]s, such as [[hemp]], [[teff]], maize, rice, wheat and other cereal grasses, [[Pulse (legume)|pulses]], [[banana]]s and plantains,{{sfn|Stover|Simmonds|1987|pp=106–126}} as well as [[hemp]], [[flax]] and [[cotton]] grown for their fibres, are the outcome of prehistoric selection over thousands of years from among [[Neolithic founder crops|wild ancestral plants]] with the most desirable characteristics.{{sfn|Zohary|Hopf|2000|pp = 20–22}}

Botanists study how plants produce food and how to increase yields, for example through [[plant breeding]], making their work important to humanity's ability to feed the world and provide [[food security]] for future generations.{{sfn|Floros|Newsome|Fisher|2010}} Botanists also study weeds, which are a considerable problem in agriculture, and the biology and control of [[Plant pathology|plant pathogens]] in agriculture and natural [[ecosystems]].{{sfn|Schoening|2005}} [[Ethnobotany]] is the study of the relationships between plants and people. When applied to the investigation of historical plant–people relationships ethnobotany may be referred to as archaeobotany or [[paleoethnobotany|palaeoethnobotany]].{{sfn|Acharya|Anshu|2008|p = 440}} Some of the earliest plant-people relationships arose between the [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|indigenous people]] of Canada in identifying edible plants from inedible plants. This relationship the indigenous people had with plants was recorded by ethnobotanists.{{sfn|Kuhnlein|Turner|1991}}