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
