Provided is a method for producing a banana plant with tolerance or resistance to Fusarium oxysporum Cubensis TR4 and such plants. The method includes (a) exposing one or more banana meristems, in one or more propagating cycles, to a medium including a demethylating agent (in vitro mutagenesis) to thereby provide one or more banana meristems exhibiting expression and thereby amplification of retrotransposable elements in their plant genome as determined by Southern blot hybridization analysis, and (b) rooting the meristems that exhibited the amplification and regenerating therefrom one or more regenerated banana plants, at least one of the regenerated banana plants having tolerance or resistance to Fusarium oxysporum Cubensis TR4.
