Yes you can use gene transfer if this resistance is controlled by simple gene. But if this resistance controlled by many genes, you have to go through breeding program for this resistance.

You will need tissue culture after gene transfer too. But if you use tissue culture only he needs to get a good selection method to get what he wants.

Your variety resistance for smut was broken due to variety deterioration, this may happened in sugarcane, so we were evaluating the new varieties for more than10 years through selection program.

For resolving this problem you have two ways:

1- introduce the variety through back-cross and selection programs, then you will obtain a new variety with smut resistance

2-using cell culture techniques to select the highly resistant clone, in this method you will obtain a clone of same variety

Thanks khaled for the comprehensive answer

We in sugar crops research institute welcome all interested sugar crops (sugarcane, sugar beet, sweet sorghum and natural sweeteners like stevia and chicory)

With other crops, loss of disease resistance is usually the result of the pathogen evolving mechanisms to overcome the plant's resistance mechanism. Do recent isolates of the pathogen infect HSF-240 ramets of known provenance (i.e. known to be resistant to the old isolates)? Do old isolates of the pathogen infect current stock? If so, you may need to find new sources of resistance, rather than cleaning up the current nursery material.

Sorry if this response is overly naive, I'm not familiar with sugar cane so I could easily have missed something that is common knowledge.

@Thomas, I agree with your answer. I think this is the most logical and cost effective way to start solving this issue.

@ Ahmed Alzohairy and @Thomas

Thanks for all, we must notice that

Sugarcane smut caused by Ustilago scitaminea which has many races and the resistance to U. scitaminea appears to be the result of several characteristics and is determined by a number of genes. In addition, commercial sugarcane varieties are polyploid hybrids of several Saccharum species. Genetic resistance in this case does not follow the strict gene-for-gene pattern as seen in some fungal pathogen-host interactions, although differences in variety susceptibility to different smut isolates have been reported.

So you need to determine which race of smut you have and conduct your current nursery material to protocol for cleaning it up

Hi,

This looks at first like a classical case of reseistance breakdown through the selection of virulent races of the pathogen. Additional to the checks suggested by Thomas, it would help to have some documentation regarding the time course of resistance loss ( was it gradual over a number of years, or rather a sudden event) and/or the genetic background of resistance.

There are ways of 'managing' defeated resistance genes. These methods are basically based on selecting against the virulent isolates. This imposes to remove for some time the once resistant host accessions from cultivation, and /or using them in spatial diversification patterns (cv mixtures for instance). There is a lot of literature on the subject, since thye classical books of Vanderplank in the 1960s ( particularly his famous 'Disease resistance in plants', 1968) and Robinson a bit later, to the experimental work on fitness costs of unnecessary virulence ( see the special issue of Plant Pathology in December 2013, accessible as open access on Plant Pathology website) and simulation work by Zadoks, Mundt and many others rega&rding spatial diversification schemes and their impact on pathogen population and resistance durability. Check also the very good papers by Martin Wolfe on the topic of cv mixtures and pathogen evolution.

I don't know whether such schemes would be applicable in sugar cane, but the theoretical bases for 'recycling' defeated resistance sources are all there.

The foregoing is very interesting, but there is likely to be a more simple answer. Unless you're treating for it, your variety has almost certainly experienced an increased incidence of ratoon stunting disease (RSD), which generally weakens the plant, thus eroding its defence systems. This disease has been linked to instances of 'variety decline' in the past. Without treatment, you typically get 5-10 years out of a variety, which then 'runs out', 'senesces' or 'deteriorates'. There is plenty of information on this in a review I published last year: 

Young AJ (2016) Possible origin of ratoon stunting disease following interspecific hybridization of Saccharum species. Plant Pathology 65, 1403-1410. 

There are a range of PCR and qPCR diagnostics available to test for RSD, or you could just try the old-fashioned slicing method to see if your cane is infected.  

So... if you want to rescue your variety, try hot water treatment (50C for 3 hrs). It's best to cut the stalks and leave them for a few days prior to treatment, then leave them for a few days after treatment. You will get a reduction in 'germination', but after successive rounds you should be able to clean up your variety for future distribution. 

Happy to discuss further. Best of luck.