Three Newly Recorded Natural Hosts of Aeginetia pedunculata (Roxb.) WalL (Orobanchaceae)

摘要

Root holoparasitic angiosperm Aeginetia pedunculata (Roxb.) Wall. (Orobanchaceae) was first reported on sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum L) in India around a sugar factory area at Plassey in West Bengal (Ray and Dasgupta 2003; Ray and Dasgupta 2006a).It causes serious crop loss by reducing sucrose content in cane juice and by causing premature drying of sugarcane clumps. In a sugarcane (cv BO 91) field with 31% of A. pedunculata infected clumps, the loss of sucrose in individual cane was estimated at 59%. The overall loss of commercial cane sugar (CCS) was 37% amounting to 1.89 t/ha) (Ray and Dasgupta 2006b). Survey and investigation conducted in and around the infected sugarcane plots in six farms of the Plassey sugar factory during 2001-2002 revealed that A. pedunculata also occurred on four other plant species, all of which are included in the grass family (Poaceae). These are Cynodon dactylon (L.) Pers., Saccharum spontaneum L., Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench and Vetiveria zizanoides (L.) Nash. Among these four species, however, C. dactylon, S. spontaneum and S. bicolor are new host records. C. dactylon is a poor host (Table 1).