CANTERBURY WHEAT.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLVI, Issue 10685, 31 December 1925, Page 6

CANTERBURY WHEAT.

FEW FUNGUS DISEASES. INVESTIGATION BY EXPERTS. (Per Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, This Day. An investigation made recently by officers of the Department of Agriculture of the wheat-growing districts of Canterbury and North Otago disclosed the fact that this year's crops are practically free from rust or mildew. The investigation was made by Messrs C. J. Neill, field mycologist, Department of Agriculture, Wellington, and F. E. Ward, Instructor in Agriculture, Christchurch, and the object was to ascertain the distribution of fungus diseases on cereals. Representative farms in the wheat-raising districts were visited and the crops inspected. "An interesting thing,'' said Mr Ward yesterday, "was that the only place where we found any sign of rust on cereals was at Wakanui, and then only on a few isolated leaves. This is rather unusual; scarcely a year passes without rust being present on cereal crops. Another gratifying feature of the investigation was that no mildew was noted; last year mildew was very bad."

A close look-out was kept for takeall. Although the crops in the Timaru district are usually badly infected, takeall was not much in evidence at the time of inspection; but on the heavier lands, near Ashburton, some crops which were badly affected were noted, and, in the fields referred to, it was present to a somewhat alarming extent. The crops inspected were also carefully looked over for traces of smut, both loose smut and bald (or bunt) smut. Loose smut, as is generally known, is enclosed in the seed, and grows with it, so that the seed cannot be treated with the ordinary pickles used to counteract bunt smut. The investigators found that quite a number of farmers were under the impression that there was no loose smut oh their crops, but the inspection made by the officers of the Department showed that particularly solid straw Tuscan most regularly had from a trace to 1 or 2 per cent, of this smut. College Hunters and Velvet, on the other hand, were remarkably free from it. Mr Ward ventured the opinion that the almost entire absence of parasitic fungi may mean that, should weather conditions continue to be favourable, this season's wheat will fill more satisfactorily than was the case last season.

At Windsor, North Otago, there was collected on a big patch of Agropyron repeus (old man twitch) a smut not previously met with by the investigators. On being submitted to the Department's mycologist, Mr Cunning,nam, he identified it as TJstilago hypodytes, and commented that its discovery at Windsor is the first occasion that its presence has been recorded either in New Zealand or Australia. This smut destroys the inflorescences, but does not kill the plant.