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Disease-resistant Sugar-cane Varieties Developed for Louisiana Industry. (U. S. Department of Agriculture, Press Service.) --Diseases and other damaging influences to sugar-cane production, such as mosaic infection, root rot, and borer injury, have seriously menaced the Louisiana cane-growing industry in the past few years. In an effort to improve the situation the U. S. Department of Agriculture has co6perated with the Louisiana agricultural experiment station to develop resistant or immune varieties.
One variety sent from the department greenhouses in 1922 for testing under Louisiana conditions showed such promise that it was recommended for wider use. It already has been planted on approximately 20,000 acres. This variety, together with two others now being recommended, has shown such favorable performance in comparison with the varieties formerly used that the rehabilitation of the industry is practically assured as soon as the entire acreage can be planted to these new resistant varieties.
Although these new varieties are greatly superior to the old varieties they have certain disadvantages. To remedy this the department will continue to import promising varieties, and attention is being directed toward further improvement by systematic cane breeding in the United States. A number of imported varieties tested during the crop year 1925-1926 at the Louisiana station are reported on in Department Circular 418-C, " Yield Tests of Diseaseresistant Sugar Canes in Louisiana," just issued by the U. S. Department of Agriculture. Unfavorable weather conditions prevented yield comparisons in all but four of the eleven varieties planted. These four were compared in duplicate on two widely different but representative soil types, and the uniformly favorable outcome, despite the various adverse circumstances, indicates a wide adaptability of these hardy canes to Louisiana conditions.
The variety known as P. O. J. 213 was the outstanding variety and exceeded all others on the heavy soil by 500 to 12oo pounds of available sugar to the acre; but in the light-soil test, possibly because of more severe borer injury, it yielded about the same as P. O. J. 234, the new variety now being widely planted. These two varieties, when grown on a third type of soil near Lafayette, La., in comparison with the commonly grown Louisiana Purple, outyielded the latter variety by 300 and 800 pounds of available sugar per acre.
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