The first description of sheath blight appeared in Japan (Miyake, 1910) and the causal
organism was subsequently identified as Hypochnus sasakii which had previously been
described by Shirai (1906). In the Philippines, a similar disease was discovered by
Reinking (1918) and Palo (1926) which they attributed to a fungus of the Rhizoctonia
group. In Sri Lanka, Park and Bertus (1932) also associated sheath blight with a
Rhizoctonia species, referring to it as R. so/ani. Two years later the disease was reported
in China (Wei, 1934), but only after descriptions appeared in Brazil, Surinam,
Venezuela, Madagascar and the USA was the initial assumption revised that sheath
blight occurred only in Asia (Ou, 1985).