Smut threatened to destroy sugarcane farming but ended up reshaping it

Walking around Joe Russo's Childers property today, it is hard to imagine the scene 20 years ago.

Back then, quarantine tape blocked paddocks, machinery sat idle and biosecurity crews in hazmat suits moved methodically through rows of sugarcane.

"Immediately, everything was shut down," Mr Russo said. "I couldn't even move to the shed."

Mr Russo's farm, 320 kilometres north of Brisbane, was ground zero for the east coast's first detection of sugarcane smut on June 9, 2006.

It was a moment the industry, on the cusp of the annual harvest, had been dreading.

"We were all taken aback but didn't realise what the ramifications would be once it was identified," Mr Russo said.

"It threw a spanner in the works in all facets of the industry.

"We couldn't start harvesting. We had to get plants trucked down from North Queensland and that cane had to be redirected all around."

The alarm was justified.

Sugarcane smut disease, or Ustilago scitaminea, is a fungal disease spread through airborne spores that stunts plant growth.

The disease is usually identified by a black whip-like structure that grows from the top of the cane stalk.

It can wipe out entire crops of susceptible sugarcane varieties, which made up 78 per cent of cane grown in the Bundaberg-Childers region at the time.

The disease had already devastated crops in Brazil, and was first detected in Australia in the Ord River region in Western Australia in 1998.

There eradication proved impossible and the west no longer has a commercial sugar industry.

Mr Russo is still unsure how the disease reached his farm more than 3,600 kilometres away.

"I was wondering how long it would take before I could get back into normal rotation and start getting cane back in," Mr Russo said.

Within five months, more than 50 sugarcane farms were placed under quarantine in the Childers and Bundaberg region.

The disease was then detected in Mackay in November 2006, and by the end of 2008 all of Queensland's remaining major cane-growing areas were infected.

Learning to live with it

When eradication efforts failed, the industry faced a new reality: learning to live with and manage smut.

The Queensland government committed $15.6 million over four years to fight the disease.

Twenty years on, industry leaders believe the outbreak permanently changed how the sugar sector approaches biosecurity.

Advocacy group Canegrowers chief executive Dan Galligan said smut shifted attitudes from reactive to anticipatory.

"Our focus now is to be much earlier," he said.

"We look around the world for what might be the risks to our sugarcane sector, to see the risks elsewhere, and we do surveillance in partnership with other industries.

"We can see things happening in other countries before we even get exposed."

Smut busters

Sugar Research Australia started screening sugarcane varieties for smut resistance after the WA detection.

The east coast incursion accelerated its efforts and prompted the Smut Buster Program.

High-value parent varieties that were susceptible to the disease were used to breed resistant clones while maintaining the yield the industry relied on.

"That allowed us to continue breeding high-value varieties for the industry without reducing the amount of genetic gain that we see in our breeding program over time," Sugar Research Australia plant breeder Alison Jensen said.

When the program began, less than 10 per cent of Australian sugarcane varieties were resistant to smut.

Today, more than 90 per cent are.

Ms Jensen said disease testing was now integrated into breeding programs much earlier in the process.

"We have a pathology site based at Woodford where any of the new clones of interest are transferred there and tested for diseases like sugarcane smut, also Fiji leaf gall, leaf scald, those sorts of diseases," she said.

"Before we release a variety, we're confident that they're suitable for industry and aren't going to pose any risk from yield losses from a particular disease."

Back at Childers, Mr Russo still spots the occasional smut in his rows, but it no longer worries him.

"It's not the big bad thing we all thought it was going to be," he said.

Twenty years on, the disease that once halted the sugar industry has instead reshaped how it prepares for the next threat.

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