Editing Monoculture (section)

==== Bananas ====
Until the 1950s, the [[Gros Michel banana|Gros Michel]] cultivar of banana represented almost all bananas consumed in the United States because of their taste, small seeds, and efficiency to produce. Their small seeds, while more appealing than the large ones in other Asian cultivars, were not suitable for planting,<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.promusa.org/Gros+Michel|title=Gros Michel|website=The banana knowledge platform of the [[ProMusa]] network|access-date=2019-06-08}}</ref> meaning all new banana plants had to be grown from the cut [[Suckers (botany)|suckers]] of another plant. As a result of this [[Asexual reproduction|asexual]] form of planting, all bananas grown had identical genetic makeups which gave them no traits for resistance to ''[[Fusarium wilt]]'', a fungal disease that spread quickly throughout the Caribbean where they were being grown. By the beginning of the 1960s, growers had to switch to growing the [[Cavendish banana]], a cultivar grown in a similar way. This cultivar is under similar disease stress since all the bananas are clones of each other and could easily succumb as the Gros Michel did.<ref name=":16">{{Cite journal|last1=Schwarzacher|first1=Trude|last2=Heslop-Harrison|first2=J. S.|date=2007-10-01|title=Domestication, Genomics and the Future for Banana|url= |journal=[[Annals of Botany]]|volume=100|issue=5|pages=1073–1084|doi=10.1093/aob/mcm191|pmid=17766312|issn=0305-7364|pmc=2759213}}</ref>