Why is it important to maintain genetic diversity in crop plants

Why is it important to maintain the genetic diversity of crop pla…?

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The greater the number of variations of a species the better the chance that the species will survive in the long scheme of things. So if you have a single crop with one phenotype and a new disease arises tomorrow and attacks this one pheno…

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Why is it important to maintain the genetic diversity of crop plants?

Q: I know its important to maintain diversity, in case the new GM crops don’t have resistance to a new strand of fungi/bacteria etc that would devastate our agricultural crops, thus needing to go back to our traditional crops explaining a need for maintain diversity, but is there any other reason we would need to maintain genetic diversity other than the increase it provides in gene pool thus saving us from potential food loss? I would really appreciate help, thanks so much for taking the time to read/answer this!

A: The greater the number of variations of a species the better the chance that the species will survive in the long scheme of things. So if you have a single crop with one phenotype and a new disease arises tomorrow and attacks this one phenotype and kills all of them, it is the end for that species. But if there are lots of variations, many phenotypes, there is a greater chance that one of them would survive the new disease.