Panama disease be immune to Panama disease was found and adopted, the Cavendish. In a few years, the devastated plantations resumed business as usual, and the transition went smoothly in the American market. Shortly thereafter, Malaysia entered the banana-growing business. Cavendish banana plantations were new to that country in the 1980s, but they rapidly expanded to meet the demand. Thousands of acres of rain forests and former palm oil plantations were shifted to banana production. Within a few years, though, the new plants began to die. It took several years to identify the problem. They found it to be Panama disease, although
Plant disease resistance viable geographic range of pathogen species and cause some diseases to become a problem in areas where the disease was previously less important. These factors make modern agriculture more prone to disease epidemics. Common solutions include constant breeding for disease resistance, use of pesticides, use of border inspections and plant import restrictions, maintenance of significant genetic diversity within the crop gene pool (see crop diversity), and constant surveillance to accelerate initiation of appropriate responses. Some pathogen species have much greater capacity to overcome plant disease resistance than others, often because of their ability to evolve rapidly and to disperse broadly.