Chapter 1
Brief History of Cercospora Leaf Spot of Sugar Beet Robert T. Lartey, John J. Weiland, and Lee Panella Sugar beet (Beta vulgaris L.), as it is known today, was developed from the beet root (Runkelrübe), which is most likely a native of the humid parts of western and southern Asia. Although the beet was probably known as early as 500 B.C., it was first cultivated for sugar in Europe in the eighteenth century (Van Cleef 1915). According to Van Cleef, uncertainty remains about the westward movement of the beet to Europe. What is certain is that it arrived in Europe via the Mediterranean countries through Egypt. Long before its cultivation as an alternate source of sugar, beet was harvested as a vegetable and for medicinal use. The cultivation of sugar beet as an alternative source of sugar is attributed to the work of Andreas Siegmund Marggraf in the 1740s and his student Franz Karl Achard, who is credited with building the first sugar factory (Fabrik) in Cunern, near Breslau (Polish Wroclaw), Schlesia, in 1801 (Van Cleef 1915; Coons 1949). Following Nelson’s victory in the Napoleonic war (1800–1815) at Trafalgar in 1805, continental Europe was cut off from the West Indies’ cane sugar by an English blockade. By 1806, cane sugar had virtually disappeared from European shops. In 1811, as the story goes, Napoleon Bonaparte was presented with two loaves of sugar made from sugar beet. Napoleon was so impressed that he decreed that 32,000 hectares of French land should be planted with beets and provided the assistance needed to get factories established. Sugar beet factories subsequently were established in France, Germany, Austria, Russia, and Denmark. This was the advent of the beet sugar industry in Europe. By the turn of the century, the proportion of the world’s beet crop used for sugar production rose from 14% in 1853 to 65% by 1900 (Poggi 1930). Early attempts to establish a sugar industry in the United States in 1837 met with failure (Coons 1949). Indeed, according to Coons, the first beet sugar factory in the United States was established in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1837 but was shut down within three years. The subsequent success of the industry in the United States was probably due to the efforts of Charles Goessmann, a German chemist at the Massachusetts Agricultural College, the predecessor of the University of Massachusetts (Adams 1999). Goessmann conducted the first scientific experiments on sugar beet culture in the United States between 1870 and 1874, establishing and strongly advocating conditions under which sugar beet could be cultivated profitably in the United States. The first successful sugar beet-based sugar factory was built at Alvarado, California, in 1870, rebuilt in 1879, and modernized in 1936 (Coons 1949). Cercospora beticola Sacc., the causal agent of Cercospora leaf spot (CLS) of sugar beet and other cultivated and wild Beta spp., was first described as a species of the genus Cercospora by Saccardo (1876). The typification of Cercospora has been clouded in 1