A second attempt at domesticating the tomato: reading answers and analysis
Using CRISPR gene editing, teams in Brazil and China re-domesticated wild tomatoes in under three years instead of 3,000, and made them bigger, more plentiful, richer in lycopene or vitamin C, disease- or salt-resistant. A US team did the same for the groundcherry. Experts hope for crops that cope with a warming planet, but doubt new foods will become staples.
Questions 14-26 · 13 marks · 3 question blocks
Where the answers sit
Section matching (14-18) uses C twice. The researcher matching (19-23) mostly needs A, D and E, and Kudla is the answer twice. The sentence completions (24-26) are in B and C.
Questions 14-18
C holds two items: the disease-resistant strain from China and Kudla's 'quite tasty' verdict. B explains how breeding from single plants loses diversity and flavour. E names foxtail, oat-grass and cowpea as candidate crops. A compares 3,000 years of domestication with under three years now.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 14 | C | — |
| 15 | B | — |
| 16 | E | — |
| 17 | A | — |
| 18 | C | — |
Questions 19-23
Kudla gives two views: we use only a small share of the world's 50,000 edible plants, and he won't say which species are next. Gao talks about drought- and heat-tolerant crops for a warming planet. Van Eck is limited by licence and approval costs. Jones doubts new foods will catch on widely.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 19 | B | — |
| 20 | D | — |
| 21 | A | — |
| 22 | C | — |
| 23 | A | — |
Questions 24-26
B supplies the lost trait of supermarket tomatoes. C gives what the FRUIT WEIGHT edit tripled, and what one Chinese strain tolerates (the same strain is rich in vitamin C). The UK and US spellings of flavour are both accepted.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 24 | flavour | flavor |
| 25 | size | — |
| 26 | salt | — |
The questions most people get wrong
A (Kudla). He wouldn't reveal his team's next species because CRISPR makes it too easy for others to copy. The sentence doesn't say 'secret', so it's easy to miss.
The strain is 'more salt tolerant', so it wasn't badly affected by salt. 'Bacterial spot' belongs to a different strain.
A. The opening sets 3,000 years of traditional domestication against under three years with CRISPR. That comparison is the whole first paragraph.
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Cambridge IELTS 17, Test 2, Reading Passage 2. The passage name belongs to Cambridge University Press. No passage text or question wording is reproduced on this page. The answers are published for self-marking, and the analysis is our own.