Coffee cultivation in Sri Lanka was abandoned because of the disease

1. Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) was a major coffee producer in the 19th century. 2. However, coffee cultivation in Sri Lanka was devastated and largely abandoned in the latter half of the 19th century. 3. The primary cause for this collapse was a fungal disease known as coffee leaf rust (caused by the fungus Hemileia vastatrix). 4. This disease appeared in Ceylon around 1869 and spread rapidly, destroying coffee plantations across the island. 5. This led planters to switch to other crops, most notably tea, which subsequently became Sri Lanka's main plantation crop. 6. Other terms like leaf blight, leaf spot, and rot refer to different types of plant diseases, but it was specifically coffee leaf rust that caused the collapse of coffee cultivation in Sri Lanka.