Brendon Briggs

Biology

13 February, 18:41

Potatoes were the main crop in Ireland in the 1800s. Almost the entire population of Ireland was dependent

on a single variety of potato, the "lumper." These potatoes were reproduced by a method of asexual

reproduction known as vegetative propagation. In the middle of the 1800s, a disease caused by a fungus

killed almost the entire lumper crop within two years. As a result, millions of people in Ireland died of starvation.

The most likely reason the potato disease was able to destroy the potato crop in such a short time is that the

(1) potato population lacked variations

(2) lumper variety had a long reproductive cycle

(3) lumper had several variations caused by vegetative propagation

(4) potato population in Ireland utilized all of the finite resources