Deformation of the product of complex Fano manifolds.

Let X be a connected family of complex Fano manifolds. We show that if some fiber is the product of two manifolds of lower dimensions, then so is every fiber. Combining with previous work of Hwang and Mok, this implies immediately that if a fiber is a (possibly reducible) Hermitian symmetric space of compact type, then all fibers are isomorphic to the same variety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]