Subscribe
In a typical February, farms in western Uttar Pradesh’s Nangla Mubarik village are full of tall rows of ready-to-harvest sugarcane stalks. After all, the village is in Muzaffarnagar, the “sugar bowl of India”. The district also hosts the country’s largest jaggery market, accounting for 20 per cent of India’s total jaggery production. But when Down To Earth (DTE) visited the village this February, several farms had replaced sugarcane with poplar nurseries. “It is as if someone has cast an evil eye on our sugarcane,” says 80-year-old Satyaveer Singh, a farmer from the village. His family owns around 5 hectares (ha), which has always been entirely under sugarcane. But this season, for the first time, they gave 2 ha on lease for poplar farming. Villages cultivate poplar due to its demand by plywood manufacturing units in nearby districts.
The reason for this shift is the damage that red rot, a fungal disease, has done to the sugarcane crops. Caused by Colletotrichum falcatum, the disease is characterised by a reddish discolouration of rotting internal stalk tissues—which also gives red rot its local name, laal sadan—and a sour, alcoholic odour that emanates when the cane is split open. The disease has spread across not just Muzaffarnagar but also Bijnor, Moradabad and other districts across western Uttar Pradesh over the past two years.
As a result, cane production dropped from 224.25 million tonnes in 2022-23 to 215.81 million tonnes in 2023-24, according to data with the Directorate of Sugarcane Development, Lucknow. Similarly, sugar production fell marginally from 10.48 million tonnes in 2022-23 to 10.41 million tonnes in 2023-24, according to the state’s Sugar Industry and Cane Development (SICD) Department.
“Usually in 5 ha, we get 6,000 quintals but last year we got hardly 3,500 quintals, even after spending lakhs of rupees on pesticides and chemicals,” says Singh. “We have spent around Rs 50,000 per acre (1 acre equals 0.4 ha) on pesticides to deal with the disease. While pesticide companies made money, many farmers are now debt-ridden,” says Anil Kumar, another farmer.
What warrants greater concern is that the disease is affecting Co 0238, a “wonder” variety that dominates sugarcane farms in the state.
Introduced in Uttar Pradesh in just 3 per cent of the cultivated area in 2013-14, it quickly displaced all the other varieties, to cover 87 per cent of sugarcane farms in the state by 2020-21, as per the Uttar Pradesh Council of Sugarcane Research, Shahjahanpur. The variety’s adaptability to waterlogged and water-deficit conditions, different sowing periods, subtropical regions and climatic extremes made it popular, says Kunal Munjal, senior research fellow, Economic Analysis Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Bengaluru. Munjal has been researching on the sugarcane economy of western Uttar Pradesh.
Farmers say that in the years after its introduction, Co 0238 doubled the average yield of sugarcane from 600-700 quintals to 1,200-1,250 quintals per ha and increased the average sugar recovery rate from the cane from 9 per cent to 12-14 per cent. This led to higher profits. “Co 0238 was also moderately resistant to red rot,” Bakshi Ram, former director, ICAR-Sugarcane Breeding Institute, Coimbatore, tells DTE, who developed the variety in 2009.
Source: Kunal Munjal (2024), "Challenging Times for the Sugarcane Economy of Western Uttar Pradesh," Review of Agrarian Studies, vol. 14, no. 2
Red rot has been known in India since as early as 1901, according to the Indian Council of Agricultural Research-Indian Institute of Sugarcane Research (ICAR-IISR). It has damaged several elite sugarcane varieties like Co 213, Co 312, Co 1148, Co 7717, CoS 8436, CoSe 92423 and CoSe 95422. It spreads through air, water, setts (pieces of sugarcane stalk used to plant new crops) and soil, reducing the yield in the affected farm, lowering the quality of sugarcane juice and reducing production of sugar, jaggery and bagasse.
Prior to the current outbreak in the western parts, red rot had also spread to the central and northern parts of Uttar Pradesh, spreading over more than 20,000 ha in over 40 districts, according to a 2021 paper published in the International Journal of Tropical Agriculture. It was also reported in eastern Uttar Pradesh before spreading to the western parts in 2022, says Munjal.
Researchers tell DTE Co 0238 may have succumbed to red rot because of its widespread cultivation. “Whenever there is a large concentration of a single variety, insects, pests and diseases get similar environment everywhere and so have a chance to multiply,” says Bakshi Ram.
Red rot follows a phenomenon called the 'boom-and-bust' cycle, explains R Viswanathan, Director, ICAR-IISR. "What happens is when a variety is good, it is preferred by both farmers and the industry and this leads to a monoculture situation. Because of this monocropping the pathogen evolves to break down the plant's genetic resistance against a particular disease," he says.
In the case of Co 0238, a new highly virulent pathotype of the fungus, CF13, has been found to be responsible for breakdown of the variety’s resistance. “There was pressure on the pathogen to survive, so it evolved to attack Co 0238. In scientific terms, this is called the co-evolution of host and pathogen,” says Bakshi Ram.
Another major factor for the spread of red rot is excessive rainfall and floods. Such conditions are not suitable for Co 0238, says Bakshi Ram, because the variety gets predisposed to biotic and abiotic stresses and the plant system weakens.
Munjal has analysed India Meteorological Department’s rainfall data for 2016-23 in western Uttar Pradesh and found deviation in normal and actual rainfall in 2020-23. Floods were widely reported in various areas. These years coincide with the spread of red rot, he says.
To curb further spread of red rot, scientists and agriculture officials recommend reducing the cultivated area under Co 0238. But farmers claim that many other varieties lack the yield, recovery rate and ratooning potential of Co 0238. Ratooning is a process in which stubble from harvested sugarcane is left on the field, so a new crop can grow from it.
The SICD Department has issued advisories to farmers to replace the variety with others such as CoS 19231, CoSe 17451, Co 15023, Co 0118, CoLk 14201, CoLk 16202, Cos 13235, Cos 17231, Cos 18831, and CoLk 15466. “Even the mills have been asking us to switch to varieties like Co 0118, but it does not provide ratoon,” says Sudheer Choudhary, a farmer from Nangla Mubarik village. In 2024, he replaced Co 0238 with Cos 13253. “Cos 13253 is the only one closest to Co 0238 in terms of yield, falling short by 50-60 quintals per 0.4 ha. It does not have red rot yet,” he says.
Seed availability has also been a problem. During his research, Munjal found that even though mills and the SICD Department had offered new cane seeds at R400 per quintal, there was a sudden production loss that created a seed shortage. He says that some large farmers now sell seeds at inflated prices of Rs 600-1,200 per quintal, well above regulated rates.
Farmers are also desperate for a new “wonder” variety, and are buying seeds of varieties like CoPb 95 (approved in Punjab but not in Uttar Pradesh), and those from Maharashtra, says Munjal. In any case, say scientists, replacing a variety fully will take three to five years. Ratooning provides an additional challenge, because farmers would not be able to completely uproot Co 0238 crops, treat the soil and land to prevent red rot.
With the outbreak in western Uttar Pradesh continuing to destroy crops, only a few cultivators in Muzaffarnagar are planning to grow sugarcane again in March. Young farmers are already moving to cities for jobs, says Satyaveer Singh.
This is bound to have a larger impact, given that other major producers such as Maharashtra and Karnataka are also reporting issues like a reduction in yield due to premature flowering due to rise in temperatures and excessive rainfall. The National Federation of Cooperative Sugar Factories Limited in a recent forecast estimates a decline of 15 per cent in sugar production in India in the 2024-25 season, due to a dire shortage of sugarcane.
This was first published in the 1-15 March, 2025 print edition of Down To Earth