We are surrounded by millions of species, from bacteria to large plants and animals, all of them evolved from the same primitive cell that formed a long time ago. But, what made these species prevail against others? Evolution through selection.

Natural selection was first described by Charles Darwin back in 1859. Through it, only the individuals that met the required conditions for a more favorable survival prevailed in a determinate environment.
Yet, nature was not the only evolutive force in charge of selecting the species that exist today.
Parallel to the natural selection there's the artificial selection, driven -mainly- by us, humankind. This kind of selection allows species that are more useful to us to survive. A nice example of this is the plant "Beta bulgaris", this one was domesticated by mankind, having at least 3 very popular edible kinds "artificially selected" from it:
• Chard, Beta vulgaris var. cicla.
• Beetroot, Beta vulgaris var. vulgaris.
• Sugar beet, Beta vulgaris var. altissima.
Without mankind's actions, these varieties would not exist.

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Wheat has history

Artificial selection started in the prehistoric times (And If you don't like to think the world existed for that long feel free to take a biblical reference to artificial selection; yes the bible infers the use of GMOs for profit.)
A clear example is what happened with wheat, vital to most of our societies.
Around 10000 years ago in the Mesopotamia, a strange cross-breed between two undomesticated plant species created a new kind with larger seeds. This characteristic prevented them to disperse with the wind, allowing "us" to collect them easily as food. In this way, from this species -the granddaddy of the contemporary wheat- started to be nurtured and farmed by humankind: Giving place to one of the first agricultural revolutions.
The Mesopotamian populations fed on these seeds and noticed that they provided a solid source of nutritious sustain. This allowed populations to bloom, allowing the birth of more complex communities. With time, writing was invented, therefore history: The end of prehistory arrived. This wheat ancestor did not remain unchanged, it kept evolving in a process that required a third species to cross-breed becoming something very similar to what we know today.

Norin 10, a short stature high yielding variety of wheat, was bred in Japan before World War II. - Source in Image.

But, this precious cereal had a little problem: Height. The wheat from the begging of the century was a tall plant with a spike full of seeds, if strong winds blew on it a lot of plants would fall to the ground; this translated into huge losses.
During the 1960s decade, Norman Borlaug, studying the Japanese wheat farms, found a variety that had much shorter stalk. He thought that having "dwarf" plants would be an interesting way of preventing the losses created by excessive winds. This small variety did not produce good quality seeds, at least not good enough to produce flours, therefore decided to migrate the info -still unknown- that made these plants shorter to the ones that had good seeds but were taller. He did this by consecutively cross-breeding them.

The new variety was farmed in 1962 in Mexico. Food reserves in that country skyrocketed. Not long after that countries like India, Turkey, Spain, Argentina and China benefited from this new variety.

Norman Borlaug with spikes of wheat. - Source in Image.

As a reward for his hard work Norman Borlaug was awarded the 1970 Peace Nobel Price among other highly reputable awards.