Panama disease is a plant disease attacking the roots of the banana plants. It is a type of Fusarium wilt, caused by the fungus Fusarium oxysporum. The disease is resistant to fungicide and cannot be controlled chemically.
In the 1950s, Panama disease wiped out the Gros Michel, the dominant cultivar of bananas, inflicting enormous costs and forcing producers to switch to other, disease-resistant cultivars. However, new strains of fusarium oxusporum threaten the production of today's most popular cultivar, Cavendish.
Famous quotes containing the word disease:
“The inconveniences and horrors of the pox are perfectly well known to every one; but still the disease flourishes and spreads. Several million people were killed in a recent war and half the world ruined; but we all busily go on in courses that make another event of the same sort inevitable. Experientia docet? Experientia doesn’t.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)