CROP DISEASE RESISTANCE: REGIONAL VARIATION IN QUEENSLAND

VARIETAL disease resistance data are generated continually within the BSESCSIRO Plant Improvement program by BSES pathologists and technicians. These data are used to discard clones from the program, so ensuring commercially released varieties do not suffer high levels of disease in commercial crops. Ratings are also obtained to advise industry of the relative resistance of commercial varieties to endemic diseases present in the regions. In this paper, the resistance ratings of the commercial varieties growing in each region of Queensland in 1993 and 2004 have been sourced. The area planted to each variety in these years has been considered in calculations to highlight the resistance of the broader crop to each of the major diseases in the area. The results show that the Queensland industry is particularly vulnerable to sugarcane smut, that the level of yellow spot resistance in northern crops needs to be higher, that some widely reported diseases affect a significant area each year even though the resistance of the crops (in general) is high, and that there have been some positive changes in crop resistance in the last 11 years.