Sugarcane Twenty-seventh to twenty-eighth week practices

Pyrilla:

Symptoms:

• Adult is a pale Brown in color soft bodied insect that has a long snout or beak in front of its head. Nymphs are brown in color with two feathery filaments at the end of the abdomen.
• Adults and nymphs suck phloem sap from leaves and excrete honeydew on the foliage leading to sooty mold development.

Management:

Cultural control:

Avoid late application of nitrogenous fertilizers. 

Mechanical Control: 

De- trashing of dry leaves during August – September. Remove lower leaves having pyrilla eggs during summer months. The burning of trash helps in destroying unhatched eggs and over wintering nymphs. 

Biological Control:

Release of nymph and adult Ecto-parasitiod parasite Epiricania melanoleuca @ 3200-4000 nos./acre. 

Chemical Control:

Spray of Chlorpyrifos 20% EC @ 600 ml OR Monocrotophos 36% SL @ 200 ml dissolve in 250-300 lit. of water/acre.

Pokkah Boeng:

Symptoms:

Chlorotic Phase:

• Frequently, a pronounced wrinkling, twisting and shortening of the leaves accompanied the malformation or distortion of the young leaves. The base of the affected leaves is often narrower than that of the normal leaves. 

Acute Phase or Top-Rot Phase: 

• The young spindles are killed and the entire top dies. Leaf infection sometimes continues downward and penetrates in the stalk by way of a growing point. 

Knife-cut Phase (associate with top rot phase): 

one or two or even more transverse cuts in the rind of the stalk /stem in such a uniform manner as if the tissues are removed with a sharp knife, This is an exaggerated stage of a typical ladder lesion of a pokkah boeng disease.

Management:

Cultural Control:

Crop rotation should be followed in affected fields. Paired row or wider spacing planting of sugarcane. Raise and destroy diseased plants. 

Chemical Control:

Spraying of Bavistin 50% WP @1 gm/ lit. of water OR Blitox- 50% WP @2gm/ lit. of water OR Dithane M-45 @3 gm/ lit. of water are the most effective fungicides for reducing the pokkah boeng disease. Two to three sprayings with an interval of 15 days reduces the multiplication of a pathogen. Sprinkle on the crop with sour whey.