ZINC AS FERTILISER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 November 1938, Page 3

ZINC AS FERTILISER

WHEAT YIELD INCREASED.

EXPERIMENTS IN VICTORIA. The fact that zinc sulphate has a fertilising effect upon wheat in certain parts of Victoria was recently discovered by chance when officers of the Victorian Department of Agriculture were attempting to use zinc sulphate in the control of eel worm in wheat. At Nhill the addition of 301 b zinc sulphate per acre gave spectacular increases in yield of from 5 to 9.4 bushels per acre, and at Longerenong, where the zinc deficiency in the soil is apparently not so acute, an increase of 2.1 bushels has been obtained.

Zinc sulphate costs about £23 a ton in Australia, so a dressing of 301 b per acre would run to about 6s. This would be practically returned through a one bushel per acre increase. It has also been demonstrated in the Wimmera district that light applications of zinc sulphate cause the wheat to mature exceptionally early, which may be a distinct advantage in some districts. As experiments vzith zinc as a fertiliser are still in their infancy, and as it is highly probable that all districts do not suffer from a zinc deficiency in the soil, it would be inadvisable for farmers to apply it to their wheat crops in this Dominion until more research has been done. A small experimental plot of perhaps an acre out of the crop might, however, give interesting and valuable results.