10 December 2009

SMUT IMPACT SHOULD NOT BE UNDERSTATED

Peak sugarcane group, CANEGROWERS, says the ongoing cost and extent of the major disease, sugarcane smut, should not be underestimated nor its ongoing impact on profitability understated. The infestation across industry is likely to peak in 2010 and remain a major issue in 2011.

“There are heavy concentrations of sugarcane smut across all cane growing areas, and it is having a huge impact on those cane farms affected with the disease,” says CANEGROWERS CEO, Ian Ballantyne. “For example, I am aware of very badly affected farms in the Mackay and Ingham region, where major varieties had high susceptibility to the disease.”

Smut has most recently been identified in Northern NSW, now confirming its presence in every cane growing district in Australia. After the first suspect whips were identified in Bundaberg in 2006, the industry surveyed all cane-growing districts and indentified the presence of this considerable constraint on productivity in most cane growing areas.

“The best defence is replanting with smut resistant varieties, and to the industry’s credit, to the extent that these varieties have been available, the growers have taken them up with a gusto,” says Ballantyne.

“Breeding for smut resistance has been the top priority of the cane breeding program run by BSES. Good preparations with variety replacement means that smut’s impact on overall productivity has been substantially reduced due largely to joint industry and State Government commitment and an alert and responsive grower sector. The ongoing impact should not however be dismissed nor the disease announced as ‘cured’.”

According to CANEGROWERS not only is there a cost from lost productivity, but for sugarcane, replanting means large-scale additional costs for many farms, as the average sugarcane crop can be harvested and ratooned (re-used) for 3-6 years. The costs of replanting are high – not only for replacement stock, but for the time, fuel and soil health nutrient application, which form part of ensuring the new crop gets the best start. Ballantyne says it then takes time to grow – and growers, who want to take advantage of the unusually high prices available for their crop, after years of depressed prices and yields which have been knocked about by weather extremes, would like very much to capture those better prices on offer.

“The industry is buoyed by the stronger prices available for sugar on the international market, onto which over 80% of Australia’s raw sugar is sold. But it is important to remember that growers have been, and will continue to bear, the cost of the smut disease through lost productivity and increased costs. Every dollar spent on smut management, is a dollar growers don’t have to upgrade machinery or take up new technologies,” he says.