TREATING SEED WHEAT FOR SMUT.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1618, 9 December 1912, Page 10

TREATING SEED WHEAT FOR SMUT.

SOME AMERICAN ADVICE. The purpose of treating wheat, is, says an American farming ,paper, to destroy the smut spores, or seeds of the smut plant, which aro mixed with the • seed wheat either as loos? spares scattered over tho surface and among the hairs on the ends of the kernels, or as. unbroken smut -balls. There are several solutions which will'kill smut spores, the principal ones teing formalin (1 pound to 45 gallons of water) niad bluestone or vitriol (1 pound: to '4 gallons of wafer). These solutions must be made up carefully in these pro-' portions to be certain that they will.kill smut spores. Bccentinvcstigationsby the plant pathologist of the experiment station at Pullman, Wash., shows, however, that ..unbroken smut balls can lie soaked in these-i solutions for several hours, even until | they become soaked so as to settle to the bottom of the solution, without killing any considerable port of the spores which they contain. When one of these,smut balls is broken, millions of tho live spores are liberated. Spores from smut balls which had been soaked ten hours in vitriol solution germinated readily when put into, moist soil. ; To siNuiro clean seed wheat, the unbroken smut balls must be removed during the treatment, or they will 'certainly, bs. broken in the seeder and the wheat reinfected with live smut spores. Tho common practice of dipping the seed wheat into : the solution while in sacks dc4s.net. permit the removal of smutballs. Treatment should always be in an open .tank, or smut machine, where the wheat can be thoroughly stirred up and the smut balls skimmed off as fast as they float to tho surface. The only sure way to have clean seed is to remove all unbroken smut balls during. -the treatment. •