Demand for food as driver for plant sink development created by Frank Ludewig and Uwe Sonnewald

Starting with the first humans settling down to build their lives on agriculture and stock breeding, the development of food and feed became tremendously important. With increasing population, in particular boosted by industrialization, the need for more food rose further. One way to cope with the needs of people was to open up new and optimize already existing resources like the introduction of potato into the European population’s diet and the development of grasses to high-yielding cereals, respectively. The process of plant improvement is still ongoing. Nowadays, yield enhancement is still an important breeding aim for several plant species as world population further increases, especially in less developed regions. However, in addition to quantity improvement, food quality is in the focus to prevent human malnutrition and resulting diseases or early death. In this review we will give a brief historical overview on how plants were developed to nourish the population and will discuss more recent approaches to secure sufficient food production.