Heat Therapy of Cassava Infected with African Cassava Mosaic Disease. Walter J. Kaiser, Head, Plant Quarantine Station, Plant Pathology and Nematology Division, Kenya Agriculture Research Institute, Nairobi, Kenya. Raymond Louie, Research Plant Pathologist, Plant Pathology and Nematology Division, Kenya Agriculture Research Institute, Nairobi, Kenya. Plant Dis. 66:475-477. Accepted for publication 7 July 1981. This article is in the public domain and not copyrightable. It may be freely reprinted with customary crediting of the source. The American Phytopathological Society, 1982. DOI: 10.1094/PD-66-475.

Thermotherapy was used to free three cassava (Manihot esculenta) cultivars of African cassava mosaic, an important viruslike disease of cassava in East Africa. The pathogen was eradicated from 33–44% of tip cuttings (1.0–1.5 cm long) after hot-air treatment of mother plants at 37 C for 87–105 days. Survival of these tip cuttings after 35–105 days ranged from 22–73%. Exposure of entire cassava plants to hot-air treatments at 37 C for 42–96 days caused temporary remission of symptoms in most plants. Only one of 129 surviving plants was freed of disease. Two successive hot-water treatments of diseased stem cuttings at 50 or 55 C for varying intervals were not therapeutic.

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