Panama disease new, already infected plant is fairly high. Finally, the disease is known to infect certain weeds without showing symptoms, meaning it can survive in the absence of banana plants and remain undetected in a place where bananas are planted later. FOC is thought to persist only asexually, as a teleomorph or sexual phase has not been found and no recombinant genotypes have been observed. This means that the survival and dispersal of the disease relies on purely asexual spores and structures. The disease survives in chlamydospores which are produced as the plant dies and can survive in the soil for
Crop diversity Genes from Bt can be inserted into crop plants to make them capable of producing an insecticidal toxin and therefore a resistance to certain pests. Bt corn (maize) can however adversely affect non-target insects closely related to the target pest, as with the monarch butterfly. Crop diversity Crop diversity is the variance in genetic and phenotypic characteristics of plants used in agriculture. Over the past 50 years, there has been a major decline in two components of crop diversity; genetic diversity within each crop and the number of species commonly grown. Crop diversity loss threatens global food security, as the