One of the main benefits of selecting miscanthus as a commercial crop is its resistance to pests and diseases. Crop failure, or significant reductions in yield, caused by infection and infestation have not been reported in Europe for Miscanthus.

There are however reports of diseases that do infect miscanthus in Europe, these include barley yellow dwarf luteovirus (BYDV) transmitted via aphids (Christian et al., 1994: Hugget, 1996) and Fusarium. Problems have been reported in climates more similar to the native climate of Miscanthus. In the USA a fungus given the name Miscanthus blight (O’Neill and Farr, 1996) destroyed commercial horticultural seedlings, whilst in Japan Yamashita et al. (1985) found Miscanthus streak virus which was also reported by Rutherford and Heath (1992).

It is likely that as miscanthus is grown more widely across Europe it will be vulnerable to common diseases caused by such infectious agents as rusts, downy mildews and smuts that are widespread across the region.

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Christian, D.G., Lampty, J.N.L., Forde, S.M.D. & Plumb, R.T. (1994) First report of barley yellow dwarf leuteovirus on Miscanthus in the United Kingdom. European Journal of Plant Pathology, 100: 167-170.

Hugget, D.A. (1996) potential aphid pests of the biomass crop Miscanthus. In: Proceedings of the Brighton Crop Protection Conference ( Pests and Diseases), British Crop Protection Council, Farnam, Surrey, pp 427-428.

O’Niell, R.N. & Farr, D.F. (1996) Miscanthus blight, a new foliar disease of ornamental grasses and sugarcane incited by Leptosphaeria sp. and its anamorphic state Stagonospora sp. Plant Disease, 80: 980-984.

Rutherford, L. & Heath, M.C. (eds) (1992) The potential of Miscanthus as a fuel crop. Energy Technology Support Unit (ETSU) B1354. Harwell, UK.

Yamashita S., Nonaka, N., Doi, Y. & Yora, K. (1985) Miscanthus streak virus, a geminivirus in Miscanthus sacchariflorus Benth et Hook, Annals of the Phytopathological Society of Japan, 5: 582-590.