Smut Disease of Sugarcane in the Sudan

Agricultural research stands at the core of improved tolerant or resistant varieties, increased yields and crop production, food security, growth and the development of communities, countries and regions. Prior to the development of modern methodologies, techniques and equipment's many workers had to rely on more simple research methods to solve immense problems facing the farmers, industries and individual peasants alike. In this book an attempt was made to bring to book pressing field problems that had especially ravaged the sugarcane fields the world over for many years with special reference to the Sudanese experience beginning from the 1960's. Smut disease of sugarcane incited by the Basidiomycete fungus appeared in Sudan in 1964/65 cropping season with the inception of the first sugar factory at Guneid. Hence, this study coincides and marks 47 years of sugarcane crop devastation by this single disease that had resulted to immense unrecorded physical losses and in monetary terms especially under the dry semi desert conditions of the Sudan which favor the disease. Earlier on epiphytotics led to the removal from production of popular high yielding varieties.