SMUT-FREE BARLEY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 301, 20 December 1926, Page 6

SMUT-FREE BARLEY.

SUCCESSFUL EXPERIMENTS. CEOPS Df CANTERBURY. (By Telegraph—Special to "Star.") CHRISTCHURCH, this day. Smut-free barley has been produced on several areas in the Leeston district this season. The seed was treated by Mr. C. J. Neill, Government Field Mycologist, -who subjected it to the hot water treatment. The areas sown in barley totalled 504 acres. Fifty-three acres were sown in wheat, and a few acres in oats. The whole of the barley areas, as far as examination has shown, are absolutely free from smut,, and to preserve them in that condition the Department of Agriculture, on the recommendation of the Board of Research, has purchased a new mill with which to thresh the crops from these areas and from areas that will be similarly sown in the future. The hot water treatment has been known as an effective method for the past forty years, but it is not a method which the individual farmer can adopt, because the variation of one or two degrees in the temperature of the water materially injures germination. In the hands of an expert it is possible to treat the seed used in a district, and so clean up the whole country, district by district. The areas in Leeston on which the smut-free barley has been produced have produced sufficient clean barley to sow the whole of the areas in Canterbury usually devoted to barley.