WHITE BUTTERFLY

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LX, Issue 11047, 22 February 1933, Page 2

WHITE BUTTERFLY

I i . . ■ PARASITES LIBERATED. “I hesitate to think what would have happened in the Hawke’s Bay district had the weather been favourable this season for the propagation of the white butterfly. -Had there been a dry season most .of the crops would have gone,” said Mr J. Muggeridge, B.Sc. of the Plant Research. Station at Palmerston North. Mr Muggeridge, said there were millions of the pest on a crop of chou moellier which he had visited during , the week. They were just like a fluttering cloud, If the district received a spell of dry autumn weather he doubted whether there would be any crops left. Every butterfly, in its larvae state, had to eat a few square feet of leaf tissue for subsistence, and this meant a heavy toll over the countryside, said Mr Muggeridge. The white butterfly ate twelve times as much as the diamond-backed moth. Dealing, with the work of the Plant Research Station in combating the pest, Mr Muggeridge said 30,000 parval parasites and 4000 pupal parasites had been sent to. Maraekakako to launch an offensive on the pest. “I have actually found the laval parasite at work,” he said. “It is distinctly promising and multiplies at such an extent that it has overtaken the white butterfly in other countries. Some definite results will be known during the year, and periodical inspections will be made right into the winter in the districts where the parasites have been liberated.”