Scientists cultivate disease-resistant sugar cane

CANAL POINT — Citrus canker and greening, the bacterial diseases plaguing the state's signature fruit, are practically household words. That's not so with diseases that attack Palm Beach County's largest crop, sugar cane. But the tall grass attracts its share.

Dry rot, leaf scald, yellow leaf virus, orange rust, smut, purple spot, ratoon stunt: That's just the short list of more than 90 diseases, serious and not-so-serious, that cane growers deal with, according to the International Society for Plant Pathology.

At the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Sugarcane Field Station in Canal Point in the heart of western Palm Beach County's sugar cane region, the goal is to develop disease-resistant varieties that produce lots of cane with a high sugar content.



Armed with a $2.8 million annual budget and a staff of 40, the field station has been in operation since 1920, making it the nation's oldest sugar cane research center. Today, it's equipped with laboratories, greenhouses and test fields.

Researchers release one or two new varieties of sugar cane each year. Each can take a decade to create.

Farmers can't depend on just one or two cane varieties, which, if vulnerable to a pest or disease, could undo the Florida industry.

"Without the development and release of new varieties, the cane in the field would eventually succumb to disease," said Ron Rice, an agronomist at the University of Florida's Everglades Research and Education Center in Belle Glade. "The industry would go down the tubes."

It's why Florida growers plant 20 or so varieties, with six or seven accounting for 80 percent of the plantings. Debuting in December were CP 00-1446 and CP 00-2180, both developed for planting in sandy soils and touted for their high sugar yield.

A major project involves screening varieties for orange rust, a fungal disease that made its first appearance in the western hemisphere east of Belle Glade in 2007.

Wayne Davidson, agronomist with the Florida Sugar Cane League, Clewiston, said two highly popular varieties of sugar cane turned out to be susceptible to orange rust and suffered damage. Now there's excitement about a variety known as "CP (for Canal Point) 00-1101" released last year that also produces a lot of sugar economically.

"We haven't found a rust problem on it yet," Davidson said.