The reason it was so devastating, says García-Bastidas, was because the bananas were all one variety, the Gros Michel or ‘Big Mike’. The cultivar was chosen by the burgeoning banana industry because it produces large, tasty fruit that can be cut from the tree unripe, making it possible to transport a highly perishable, exotic food long distances while it continues to ripen. Each plant was a clone of roughly the same size and shape, produced from suckers – lateral shoots that develop from the rootstalk – making it easy to mass produce. It means each banana plant is genetically almost identical, producing a reliably consistent fruit crop. From a business point of view, it was a licence to print money, but from an epidemiological point of view it was an outbreak waiting to happen.
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