Author(s):

SK Vishwakarma, Amrita Nigam and Atul Singh

Abstract: During recent years Pokkah boeng is an emerging disease of sugarcane which has been recently found to cause losses in sugar and cane yield related traits. An experiment was conducted for three consecutive years from 2012-13 to 2014-15 at Sugarcane Research Institute, Shahjahanpur, UP. The results of three years mean data for twelve promising sugarcane varieties revealed that the reduction in yield and quality contributing parameters due to incidence of Pokkah boeng disease. The most important parameter which play a prime role in yield enhancement such as cane height and cane girth reduced due to this disease. Cane height decreased numerically ranging from 4.85 to 17.40% and cane girth reduced from 7.14 to 19.35%. Other yield related parameters i.e. number of green leaves, length of internodes and number of internodes also decreased ranging from 40 to 66%, 5.0 to 35.0% and 12.5 to 54.5%, respectively. Reduction in quality parameters were also observed in all promising sugarcane varieties. Pol percent in cane and sucrose percent in juice reduced from 3.65 to 10.48% and 0.60 to 5.80 %, respectively. Reduction in associated quality traits such as purity coefficient and extraction percent were also computed from 0.20 to 2.45% and 2.18 to 11.87%. Thus pokkah boeng is responsible for economic losses for Indian farmers as well as millers due to reductions in yields and quality of sugarcane.

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