Crop diversity between 20 and 90 percent crop losses in the Congo. The FAO emergency relief and rehabilitation program is assisting vulnerable returnee populations in the African Great Lakes Region through mass propagation and distribution of CMD resistant or highly tolerant cassava. A well known occurrence of disease susceptibility in crops lacking diversity concerns the 'Gros Michel', a seedless banana that saw world marketing in the 1940s. As the market demand became high for this particular cultivar, growers and farmers began to use the Gros Michel banana almost exclusively. Genetically, these bananas are clones, and because of this lack of genetic diversity,
Crop scouting Crop scouting Crop scouting is the process of precisely assessing pest pressure (typically insects) and crop performance to evaluate economic risk from pest infestations and disease, as well as to determine the potential effectiveness of pest and disease control interventions. Scouting is usually sold as a commercial service to farmers as part of Integrated pest management. New tools are available to increase the effectiveness of crop scouting, including specialized field instruments and handheld computers with GPS, enabling geotagging of crop problems. There exists a new generation of crop scouting systems that enables growers and crop consultants to precisely and accurately