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,
Crop scouting locate and tag crop issues, visualize them on an aerial map and make decisions for site-specific treatments. Before starting any actual scouting, preparation is essential to provide accurate information in an efficient manner. Crop scouting is a Integrated pest management strategy that looks at many different aspects of crop production, not just any single pest or problem. Scouts must be actively observing environmental conditions, beneficial insects, pest insects, diseases, weeds, crop growth stage, and the general health of the crop in question to get a complete picture of any problems. Since field and landscape characteristics affect pest distribution, symptom expression,