UNIDENTIFIED GRUB

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23661, 11 June 1942, Page 6

UNIDENTIFIED GRUB

* COCKSFOOT ATTACKED AT EIFFELTON The discovery of an unidentified grub which has done damage estimated at thousands of pounds has been made in the cocksfoot crops at the Eiffelton district, Ashburton County, and a preliminary survey of many crops affected has just been completed by Miss A. Hamilton, entomologist of the Department of Agriculture, attached to Cawthron Institute, Nelson.So severe have been the ravages of the pest that the return from cocksfoot, which is grown widely at Eiffelton where the land is particularly suited to this type of grass-seed, are estimated to have been reduced by 50 per cent., and more in some cases. The grub gets into the stem of the straw, and its habit is to eat out the centre. Miss Hamilton’s survey has been carried out over some 1200 to 1300 acres of crops from which she has taken samples of straw and roots of cocksfoot as the basis for further investigations. Mr G. E. Moore (Lynnford), who has crops in the area affected, told a representative of “The Press’* at Ashburton yesterday, that 95 per cent, of his cocksfoot, totalling 150 acres, had been attacked by the grubs, which had been at work in the district for about three years. The dry spring last year had been in their favour and they had spread considerably. The parent moth seemed to attack the cocksfoot plants when they were coming out in ear, about November, said Mr Moore, and the grubs, which developed from the eggs laid by the moths, took all the nourishment out of the straw. Only about one-third of the heads of his crop had produced seed this season and that seed was light in place of the heavy robust seed which was produced in the district a few years ago. In 1936 and 1937, yields in the district averaged six to nine bags to the acre, but this year the yield was more like two to four bags. If the grubs could not be stopped the position was serious because large areas in the Eiffelton district would have to go out of cocksfoot production, Mr Moore said.