• Initial symptom appears in the young crop of 3 – 4 months age as thin papery white young leaves at the top of the cane.
• Later, white or yellow tillers appear in large number below these leaves (profuse tillering).
• The cane becomes stunted with reduced internodal length with axillary bud sprouting.
• This disease appears in isolated clumps.

• The disease is caused by Mycoplasma like organisms. Mycoplasma cells are physically small – less than 1 µm – and they are therefore difficult to detect with a conventional microscope.

Management strategies

Cultural method:

• Growing resistant varieties viz., Co 86249, CoG 93076 and CoC 22
• Avoid ratooning if Grassy Shoot Disease incidence is more than 15 % in the plant crop
• If disease symptoms are visible within two weeks after planting, such plants can be replaced by healthy plants.
• Uprooted infected plants need to disposed of by burning them.

Physical method:

• Rogue out infected plants in the secondary and commercial seed nursery.
• Treat the setts with aerated steam at 50°C for 1 hour to control primary infection.
• Treating them with hot air at 540C for 8 hours and spraying twice a month with aphidicides.

Chemical method

• Spray dimethoate @ 1ml in 1 litre of water to control insect vector
• Apply pesticide methyl-demeton @ 2ml/lit of water for controlling aphids.