Sugarcane Mosaic virus returns as threat to lawns

MIAMI A plant disease linked to sugarcane that had largely vanished 40 years ago has suddenly reappeared, becoming the first virus in the state to attack South Florida's manicured lawns.

Scientists don't know why the disease suddenly morphed and began spreading in Palm Beach and Pinellas counties.

And so far they have no tools to stop it, other than cleaning lawn equipment or replacing sod with more resilient varieties, said Phil Harmon, a plant pathologist with the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

"At this point we don't know what the outcome will be, so we're being proactive and trying to get the word out," Harmon said.

Called Sugarcane Mosaic Virus, the disease first appeared in sugarcane and sod growing near cane fields in the 1960s, Harmon said.

To control the disease, growers developed resistant sugarcane. The virus virtually disappeared, only appearing sporadically in grass near cane fields and only causing yellowing.

But in 2013 something changed, he said. Lawns with the popular Floratam St. Augustine grass, the most widely used in landscaping, started dying.

"The virus adapted somewhere to kill this variety of turf grass," Harmon said.

When the grass started dying at a Boynton Beach subdivision last fall, Greg Russell, a field supervisor with Hometown Pest Control, assumed a fungus was making it sick and applied a fungicide. The treatment didn't work.

Over the spring and summer, the grass bounced back on its own, Russell said.

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Sugarcane Mosaic virus returns as threat to lawns