VIEW ARTICLE

Isolation and Cultivation of, and Inoculation with, a Mycoplasma Causing White Leaf Disease of Sugarcane. Shu- chen Lin, Plant Pathologist, Taiwan Sugar Experiment Station, Taiwan; Ching-shiou Lee(2), and Ren-jong Chiu(3). (2)Assistant Plant Pathologist, Taiwan Sugar Experiment Station, Taiwan; (3)Plant Pathologist, Plant Industry Division, Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction, Taipei, Taiwan. Phytopathology 60:795-797. Accepted for publication 2 December 1969. DOI: 10.1094/Phyto-60-795.

Treatment by immersing, for 48 or 72 hr, cuttings from white leaf-diseased sugarcane in solutions of tetracycline antibiotics markedly delayed the development of disease symptoms in young shoots subsequently arising from the treated cuttings. A Mycoplasma was obtained in Morton’s PPLO culture media from infected cane buds. When inoculated to susceptible sugarcane cuttings by repeated pin-pricking of the root bands and buds, while being immersed in inoculum, it induced white leaf symptoms, to a rather low percentage, in young plants which grew from the inoculated cuttings. Because no plants from comparable but noninoculated cuttings developed the disease, the Mycoplasma is considered to be the etiological agent of the white leaf disease of sugarcane.