BLUE WOOL WANTED.

Press, Volume C, Issue 29638, 7 October 1961, Page 6

BLUE WOOL WANTED.

Scientist’s Request

Dr. A. P. Mulcock, senior lecturer in microbiology at Canterbury Agricultural College. would like to get to the bottom of blue discolouration in wool. He would be pleased if farmers would send him samoles of wool discoloured in this way. They should be addressed to him care of the wool department at the college.

“Over a period of years we have received at the college a large number of samples of wool with various stains and discolourations,’’ says Dr. Mulcock. “Among these have been a few specimens coloured bright blue. The blue colouration is rather similar in shade to blue raddle and I think many farmers often take little note of blue wool as they regard it as only the remnants of raddle marking put on earlier in the season.

However in the samples which we have examined the blue colour has always been confined to the basal portion of the staple and the tips have not shown any evidence trf colour. “When blue wool is examined under the microscope it can be seen that the colour is not diffused throughout the fibres but is in discrete particles and these can be removed . from the wool by washing it with a solvent such as white spirit, when the wool is left completely free from colour. 1 would like to find out the cause of this blue colour, whether it is in fact residual raddle or has its origin in some other way, but in order to do this it is necessary to have quite a lot of the coloured wool as the amount of pigment which can be ex. traded is very smAL”