TOEFL Test – Reading
1. According to paragraph 1, all of the following
are true of early humans EXCEPT
(A) They fed on any plants and animals that
they found
(B) They significantly reduced the number of
animal species through hunting
(C) They spread plants from one place to
another as they migrated.
(D) They introduced new animal species to
different parts of the world.
2. Which of the sentences below best
expresses the essential information in the
highlighted sentence in the passage? Incorrect
choices change the meaning in important ways
or leave out essential information
(A) Humans first saw fruit trees growing along
pathways and vegetables growing on garbage
dumps in temporary settlements and started
cultivating them for a steady food supply.
(B) Humans living in temporary settlements
noticed that fruit trees and vegetables that they
could cultivate for a constant supply of food
were growing in waste areas
(C) Humans saw plants growing in waste areas
at temporary settlements and got the idea that
they could plant seeds to ensure a constant
supply of food
(D) Humans maintained a constant food supply
by planting fruit trees along pathways and
vegetables in garbage dumps and other waste
areas in temporary settlements
3. Why does the author include the information
that "New World residents were growing
beans, maize, squashes, and potatoes"?
(A) To support the claim that organized
agriculture developed in different parts of the
world at the same time
(B) To indicate that different crops were grown
in different parts of the world
(C) To argue against the idea that the most
diverse farming occurred in the Near East
(D) To indicate that New World farmers
cultivated a larger number of crops than Asian
farmers did.
Crop Engineering
1. Our current ability to precisely engineer crop
genomes was preceded by a long history of genetic
manipulation in agriculture. Human impact and its
accompanying effects began early in our history at many
tropical and subtropical sites around the globe. Our
ancestors were omnivores, consuming whatever plant or
animal material they fortuitously encountered. Even then,
humans had considerable effects on the environment,
reducing and even driving to extinction populations of the
animal species they hunted and expanding the distribution
of plants by accidentally distributing seeds as they
migrated.
2. Humans probably first realized that seeds
could yield a stable food supply through
agriculture when they observed plants arising
from refuse or wasteland, perhaps fruit trees
growing along forest and jungle paths from
discarded or defecated seeds or else vegetables
sprouting in garbage dumps at temporary
settlements. A more organized approach to
agriculture began about eight to ten thousand years
ago coincidentally at a number of locations around the
globe. The most diverse farming developed in the
Near East, with legumes, cereals flax, sesame, and
fruit trees. At about the same time, New World
residents were growing beans, maize, squashes,
and potatoes, and Asian farmers were beginning to
cultivate rice.
3. These early domesticated crops
foreshadowed the overwhelming changes
contemporary agriculture has wrought in plants.
Humans soon learned to separate varieties that could
be grown as crops from wild types in order to prevent
characteristics undesirable for cultivation from
mingling with those selected for farming. Continued
selection of crops with desirable characteristics
increased the separation between feral (wild) and
managed plants and accelerated the diminishing
diversity and more limited variation found in today's
crops.
 TOEFL Test – Reading
4. Which of the following can be inferred from
paragraph 3 about plants with undesirable
characteristics?
(A) Farmers cultivated them only when plants
with desirable characteristics were not
available.
(B) Farmers did not let them grow near plants
that were selected for cultivation as crops.
(C) They enabled farmers to more properly
manage the plants that were selected for
cultivation as crops.
(D) They provided farmers with a limited variety
of plants to select for cultivation as crops.
5. Which of the following is mentioned in
paragraph 4 as an effect of crops becoming
commodities?
(A) Farmers were able to cultivate a greater
variety of crops than they used to.
(B) Trade routes quickly developed as people
moved crops from one place to another.
(C) Plants became widely distributed outside
their places of origin.
(D) Feral plants were quickly wiped out as more
crops were cultivated for trading.
6. The word "inaugurated" in the passage is
closest in meaning to
(A) encouraged (B) observed
(C) achieved (D) introduced
7. Which of the following is mentioned in
paragraph 6 as one of the effects of moving
crops from one part of the world to another part
of the world?
(A) Europeans were able to successfully
colonize other continents.
(B) Plant pests and diseases became more
widespread.
(C) Some crops failed to grow very well at their
new locations.
(D) New ways to manage pests and diseases
that affected crops were introduced.
8. Which of the following is mentioned in
paragraph 7 as being true of Charles Darwin
and Gregor Mendel?
(A) They were the first to integrate the
concepts of natural selection and inheritance.
4. The simplest way to select crops is to
save seeds preferentially from plants with beneficial
traits, and the first farmers selected for large seeds
and fruit, increased seed production, lack of
dormancy, faster germination, higher annual yield,
and reduced seed scattering. The success of this
early selection resulted in an accelerating impact of
agriculture on crop diversity and feral plants. Crops
quickly became commodities, moved and traded over
a rapidly widening area, so that many plants were
distributed well beyond their previous ranges, and
some throughout the globe.
5. Three phenomena have characterized the
more recent impact of agriculture on Earth. ■ The
first was the increase in human population, which has
doubled at shorter and shorter intervals over the last
thousand years. ■ The result was increased
acreage under cultivation and a fundamental
remodeling of the globe toward managed rather than
wild ecosystems. ■ By 1998 there were
3,410,523,800 acres of land under cultivation
worldwide, an area larger than the United States. ■
Entire ecosystems have disappeared, others remain
but are threatened, and the sheer volume of people
and area of farmland have been major forces of
biological change.
6. The second event through which
agriculture modified our planet was European
colonization. Previously, migration and trade had
moved crops between countries and continents, but
the Europeans inaugurated an unprecedented
dispersal of biological material worldwide. Maize,
tomatoes, and potatoes were transported from the
New World to the Old; wheat, rye, and barley were
carried from the Old World to the New; and rice,
soybeans, and alfalfa were moved from their Asian
sources to every arable continent. Each of these and
innumerable other introductions conveyed not only
unique material but also assemblages of introduced
plant pests and diseases that today cause the
majority of pest-management problems around the
world.
 TOEFL Test – Reading

7. The third factor shaping the nature of

(B) They were the first to encourage the use of
biotechnology in agriculture.
(C) They were the first to work on evolution
and genetics at the same time.
(D) They were the first to provide farmers with
information on selecting and breeding crops.
9. Look at the four squares[■] that indicate
where the following sentence could be added
to the passage Where would the sentence best
fit?
This large-scale agriculture has actually
resulted in a decrease in biological
diversity.
Click on a square [■] to add the sentence to
the passage. To select a different location, click
on a different square.
agriculture and the environment alike is the increasing
precision with which we have selected and bred
crops. This acuity stemmed from many advances, but
at its heart lies the work of two men-one, the English
naturalist Charles Darwin, and the other, an Austrian
monk, Gregor Mendel. The concepts of evolution and
genetics were not their work alone, but both of them
were decades ahead of their colleagues in
synthesizing the companion concepts of natural
selection and inheritance that are at the core of all
contemporary biological science and that form the
substrate upon which biotechnology grew.

10. Direction: An introductory sentence for a brief summary of the passage is provided below. Complete the
summary by selecting the THREE answer choices that express the most important ideas in the passages.
Some answer choices do not belong in the summary because they express ideas that are not presented in the
passage or are minor ideas in the passages. This question is worth 2 points.

“Agriculture has had a tremendous effect on the environment.”

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Answer Choices

(A) Humans have affected plants through the process of selective breeding for more than 10,000 years.

(B) Domesticated plants have affected ecosystems worldwide as they have spread through human
migration, trade, and colonization.

(C) A greater variety of crops was cultivated in the Near East than in the New World and Asia

(D) The wide distribution of plants throughout the world has led to the development of effective pest-
management techniques aimed at protecting plants against pests and diseases.

(E) Biotechnology, based on the concepts of natural selection and inheritance, has enhanced farmers'
ability to select and grow crops with valuable characteristics.

(F) Farmers have developed methods of crop selection and breeding that do not adversely affect the
environment following the work of Darwin and Mendel.