Science & TechFact
Almost every supermarket banana is a clone.
The Cavendish variety is seedless and sterile; every plant is a cutting from the same genetic line. Until the 1950s the Gros Michel variety ruled, until the Panama disease fungus wiped out plantations. Now a new strain of that fungus is spreading, and Cavendish has no resistance to it.
Useful: Genetic uniformity makes harvests predictable, but one disease can hit everything at once.
Source: en.wikipedia.org