Sugarcane is an important commercial crop that usually gets affected by fungal diseases - red rot, smut and wilt; bacterial disease - ratoon stunting (RSD); phytoplasmal disease - grassy shoot and viral disease - mosaic and yellow leaf disease (YL) in India. Vegetative propagation in the crop favours transmission of the pathogens through the planting materials and this favours building up of epiphytotics. During the course of epiphytotics in the past, many popular varieties were eliminated from cultivation due to their high susceptibility to the diseases. The nonfungal diseases like grassy shoot, RSD, YL and mosaic seriously affect the crop productivity through varietal degeneration. Probaly due to changes in environmental conditions, minor diseases like pokkah boeng and rust have assumed serious proportions and caused severe damage to the crop in the recent years. Detailed molecular characterization established that Fusarium sacchari is the casual agent of sugarcane wilt. PCR- based molecular diagnostic techniques have been developed to detect phytoplasma and viruses inflecting sugarcane, and these are being used routinely todiagnose viruses in sugarcane seedling derived through tissue culture or meristem-tip culture. Meristem culture compined witth molecular diagnosis has been standardized as a viable strategy to manage YL in the country thereby varietal degeneration is being addressed and thus it has become possible to prolong the commercial life of many elite varieties. In addition to host resistance, management of red rot through induced resistance and agro chemical was attempted and promising results were obtained. Also a new strategy of rapid fungicide uptake in the setts was devised and by which extended protection of young crop from the fungal diseases is established. Heat therapy methods developed at SBI , Coimbatore and IISR, Lucknow are routinely adopted in most of the sugar mills in the country to produce disease-free planting materials and sustain sugarcane productivity in different regions. These new disease management strategies will improve productivity and sustain sugarcane cultivation in sugarcane.