Theory 12/Specialisation vs Robustness/Agriculture
High-Yield Varieties Are Vulnerable
The claim
Crop monoculture trades yield against pathogen risk, so the highest-yielding uniformity carries the largest epidemic potential.
01Mechanism
Genetic uniformity removes the variation that slows pathogen spread; yield is maximised by removing that variation.
02Prediction
Epidemic severity should track genetic uniformity.
03Refutation
Yield and disease risk uncorrelated would remove the trade-off.