Panama disease leaves and progresses to younger leaves until the entire plant dies. Gros Michel was the only type of banana eaten in the United States from the late 19th century until after World War II. From the beginning, however, a serious disease was present in the banana plantations of Central America. The problem was first diagnosed in Panama after which it was named. Over several decades, the fungus spread from Panama to neighboring countries, moving north through Costa Rica to Guatemala and south into Colombia and Ecuador. The banana industry was in a serious crisis, so a new banana thought to
Crop coefficient Crop coefficient Crop coefficients are properties of plants used in predicting evapotranspiration (ET). The most basic crop coefficient, "K", is simply the ratio of ET observed for the crop studied over that observed for the well calibrated reference crop under the same conditions. formula_1 Potential evapotranspiration (PET), is the evaporation and transpiration that potentially could occur if a field of the crop had an ideal unlimited water supply. RET is the reference ET often denoted as ET. Even in agricultural crops, where ideal conditions are approximated as much as is practical, plants are not always growing (and therefore transpiring) at