Defeating Cane Diseases: Plant Pathologists and the Development of Disease Control Strategies in the Australian Sugar Industry, 1920–1950

Abstract

Between 1920 and 1950, the Queensland sugar industry was troubled by many of the diseases that plagued sugar cane, often in serious proportions. Financial losses from these disease outbreaks in the 1920s prompted the Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR) and the Queensland Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations (BSES) to employ university-trained plant pathologists who undertook research into identifying the diseases, understanding their etiology and devising control strategies to reduce their impact. Archival records, annual reports of both organizations and published scientific papers are used to reconstruct the programmes of research undertaken into these diseases. Control strategies developed as a result of this research included restrictions on the movement of cane plants, the establishment of quarantine districts, use of disease-free planting material, pre-treatment of planting material with hot water and/or solutions of organic mercurial fungicides, and 'roguing' of diseased cane plants. Consequently, by 1950, gumming, Fiji and downy mildew diseases — three of the most troublesome cane diseases in Australia — had been virtually eliminated in sugar-producing districts.