Which statement best describes the subsistence strategy of horticulture? Group of answer choices It is cultivation through selective breeding of plants It is typically practiced in tropical forests, but occurs in other environments too It requires that gardens or fields are left fallow for some time to recover All of the above

The correct answer is All of the above

The cultivation of vegetables, fruits and ornamental plants falls within the same discipline of applied botany. It thus combines the satisfaction of human needs of two types: food and aesthetics.

Horticulture is the agronomic science that deals with the cultivation of vegetable garden, orchard, greenhouse and garden. It is divided into olive growing, pomology or fruit growing, and ornamental horticulture. This last division comprises two subdivisions: floriculture and landscaping. Olive growing takes care of the cultivation of plants commonly known by the names of vegetables. The first of these names applies to vegetables whose consumable part is the leaves: lettuce, spinach, mustard, almond etc. Vegetable is the botanical designation of the pod of leguminous plants, such as beans, lentils and peas.

It is popularly applied to fruits that are eaten as salad or cooked, in savory dishes, such as cucumber, eggplant and tomato, and also to inflorescences, tubers, bulbs and edible roots. Fruit growing takes care of the cultivation of fruit species, that is, producers of fruits with high sugar content, such as apples, pears, guava and mango. Ornamental horticulture takes care of both the flowering species (floriculture) and the ornamental plants appreciated for other characteristics than the production of flowers (landscaping).