Panama disease in stress-tolerance, yield, or other beneficial traits necessary for commercial varieties. Nevertheless, these efforts are leading to the best control measure for Panama disease of banana. Recently, an R gene (RGA2) was transformed into Cavendish bananas which confers disease resistance to Fusarium wilt tropical race 4. This is the first case of successful resistance in the field and is a promising step towards preventing the loss of the Cavendish cultivars that are a huge portion of banana export production and subsistence of many communities. One major impediment to breeding bananas is polyploidy; Gros Michel and Cavendish bananas are triploid and
Health measures during the construction of the Panama Canal had died during the construction of the Panama Railway and over 22,000 during the French effort to build a canal. Many of these deaths were due to disease, particularly yellow fever and malaria. At several times, construction on the Panama Railway had actually halted due to the lack of healthy workers. The high rate of deaths among workers on the Panama Canal due to disease was the source of a great deal of controversy in the United States. Newspapers, such as "The Independent", frequently reported on the poor conditions workers in the Canal Zone experienced, including the rampant disease. Poultney