WHEAT AND BARLEY CROPS INCREASING IN NORTH ISLAND

Shannon News, 18 October 1929, Page 4

WHEAT AND BARLEY CROPS INCREASING IN NORTH ISLAND

Disease Control WORK OF PLANT RESEARCH STATION Cereal growing does not take a prominent place in North Island agriculture, but there arc indications that the growing of wheat and feed barley is on the increase, reports Mr C. J. Neill, of the Plant Research Station, Palmerston North. On certain types of land—-particularly in the Rangitikci and Hawke’s Bay districts—wheat can be a very profitable crop, between turnips and grass provided a yield of 40 bushels or over is obtained. Given suitable climate and soil in good heart, if the right varieties are chosen, the grower could confidently expect a yield of well over this figure, wore it not for the loss caused by disease. It is

unfortunate that the varieties of wheat which appear to be most suitable for North Island conditions —major and white straw Tuscan for example—are particularly susceptible to epidemics of loose smut, which may take from ten to 40 per cent of the crop. All experienced wheat growers treat their seed wheat by pickling with formalin Milestone or by the modern method of dusting with copper carbonate for the prevention of stinking smut, so that this smut seldom causes appreciable loss, but none of these treatments have any control over loose smut, he informed a Times representative yesterday.

Loose smut is often called ‘black heads’ by the farmer —it appears as soon as the ear emerges from the shot blade am! converts the whole ear to a dusty black mass of spores which blow about to infect other plants, leaving a bare stalk by harvest time. Seed infected witli loose smut can be disinfected by soaking for five hours in cold water, followed by a dip of ten minutes in water held exactly at 127 deg, faint, and cooled at once in cold water and dried. To do this successfully, however, demands equipment ana care beyond the scope of most farmers and therefore the beet method to avoid this disease is to procure the seed from a crop known to be clean. At present, in the North Island this is almost importable, but the department’s certified seed wheat scheme which has been.success fully in operation in the South Islam] for the past two seasons, offers an opportunity to procure good clean seed, which it would pay any wheat grower to investigate. Bariev, as grown in the North Island, is nearly always badly smutted. This not only spoils the sample but may reduce the yield anything up to 60' per cent. The roasion for this is that few farmers realise the absolute necessity for pickling their seed barley. Many sow Ga.pe or Black barley primarily for -early green feed and later decide to let it go for harvest. Even barley grown solely for feeding should be pickled in formalin, since infected plants are off colour and unthrifty all through ami cannot be as good as healthy ones. The chief source of loss in barley is covered smut, which is quite well controlled by soaking the seed (and bags, etc.) for ten. minutes in formalin solution made up at a strength of one pint of formalin to forty gallons of water, leaving wet overnight and sowing next day. Loose smut also occurs in barley but rarely causes much loss.

Oats are not often grown now for threshing in the North but even when grown for chaff, it pays handsomely to pickle the seed in formalin—using a strength of 1 pint to 30 gallons of water dipping for ten minutes and leaving covered overnight.

The other diseases of cereals such as the rusts ard of loss importance than the smuts and moreover, our knowledge

■as not yet advanced sufficiently to provide a practical method of dealing with them.

Boot and Fodder Crop Diseases.

Disease is the main limiting factor in the production of root crops. Very few farms would be without a crop of swedes for the Winter if it wore not for fear of dry rot and club-root. Experience has shown that swedes grown for their maximum yield, that is, sown in October or November, properly manured, thinned and cultivated, will almost certainly have to be. fed off in May, long before they are needed, to save the remnant from the ravages of dry rot. By sowing in January and nedthe: thinning nor cultivating, the resulting poor crop of small bulbs may keep for July-August feed, but seems hardly worth the cost entailed. These two diseases arc under special investigation at the Plant Research Station, and with dry rot at loast, so much progress has been made that there is every hope that a method of complete control will be evolved. In the meantime, he can only recommend what every farmer knows, that swede turnip or rape crops should not follow swede turnip or rape crop on the same land and that every care should be taken to prevent soil from contaminated paddocks being taken by implements or the feet of stock on to clean land. Potatoes.

Late- blight—eommonly called Irish

blight or simply blight—is the main bug-bear of potato growers in the Worth Island. Its severity of attach varies with weather conditions and to a certain extent with the variety grown but it is present to a greater or less extent in practically every crop. It has been demonstrated many times that it pays to spray potatoes with 45 —50 Bordeaux mixure at least throe times in the growing season to hold this disease in check and to make the plants more vigorous but very few growers will go to the necessary trouble and expense to do so. The only alternative is to grow one of the more resistant varieties and to hope that the season will not be a favourable one for the blight. Beyond ' keeping notes in tihe degree of resistance of the main commercial varieties, the Plant Research Station is not working on this disease —the main problem under investigation being those diseases grouped under the name of virus diseases. "These diseases —the nature of whose casual organism is still unknown—are the main cause of the degeneration of the modern potato and the reason of the 'running out’ and low yields so common now. Working in conjunction with the departmental officers engaged in the certification of seed potatoes, a great deal of information bearing on the practical aspects of these diseases has been obtained and the coming season’s work should definitely show the most hopeful method for their control.

A definite control for one serious disease of the potato—corticium disease or black scurf —has, already been evolved and has been successfully used on a field scale. Potato growers would be well advised to inquire'about it from their local instructors in agriculture.