Soil Animals Injurious to Sugarcane Roots

Abstract

For many years the Louisiana Planters have been concerned over a complex of troubles affecting sugarcane roots. In certain fields the plants are stunted, particularly during the second year (stubble cane), can be pulled out of the ground easily, and upon examination the roots appear abnormally reduced in number and size, and are pitted and rotted to an extent that proper nourishment of the parts above ground is impossible. Scientific workers have attributed this “Growth Failureâ” or “Root Rot” to several distinct causes; Carpenter (1919, 1021), Matz (1920), Earle (1920), Edgerton and Moreland (1920), and Bourne (1922), working in different localities, thought the injury due to fungi of one kind or another. On the other hand Rands (1924) indicted a species of snail (Zonitoides arboreus Say) as an important factor, indicating that these molluses eat pits in the roots and furnish points of initial attack for root rotting fungi.