Crop diversity fruit trees and banana plants) are cloned. A single pest or disease could threaten a whole crop due to this uniformity ("genetic erosion"). A well-known historic case was the Irish Potato Famine of 1845-1847, where a vital crop with low diversity was destroyed by a single fungus. Another example is when a disease caused by a fungus affected the monocultured 1970 US corn crop, causing a loss of over one billion dollars in production. A danger to agriculture is wheat rust, a pathogenic fungus causing reddish patches, coloured by its spores. A virulent form of the wheat disease, stem rust,
Cream of the Crop Motown chief Berry Gordy appended the Supremes billing to the single so as to create more publicity for Ross' exit from the group. Another selection of note is "The Young Folks" the charting b-side of "No Matter What Sign You Are" from "Let the Sunshine In", later covered by The Jackson 5. "Cream of the Crop" also includes covers of songs by The Beatles ("Hey Jude") and Bob Dylan ("Blowin' in the Wind", also covered by Stevie Wonder). Since another Ross-led Supremes single or album had not been planned, "Cream of the Crop" was made up mostly of vaulted material.