University Botanists' Rubber Investigation

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30103, 10 April 1963, Page 16

University Botanists ' Rubber Investigation

Botanical research at the University of Canterbury, which has shown that many forms of bacteria may produce tumours similar to cr wn gall. has. within a week, produced a Nuffield Foundation research grant of £B5O and an urgent request from the Rubber Research Institute of Malaya for assistance in solving rubber disease problems. Crown gall was a classic form of bacterial tumour which produced a kind of cancer in plants similar to that in anima! tissue, said Professor W. R. Philipson. Tiis disease was not of economic importance in this country, he said. But experiments in his department showed that many other bacteria produced similar results. A preliminary notice of these findings was printed in “Nature.” the British scientific journal.

The Nuffield grant and the Malayan inquiry were direct results of this notice.

The Rubber Research Institute of Malaya asked if it could send samples of bacteria] tumours it had isolated from rubber trees and 10 test tubes with four samples of the most suspect culture and six others have arrived in Christchurch,

Profesor Philipson said his department had used the sun-

flower as test material because it was easily handled, responded rapidly, and seemed a good standard. Seed was germinated, kept sterile in tubes, and then innoculated with bacteria. Formation of a tumour was the first indication of positive reaction.

The Malayan investigation might not start immediately but it would take only 10 days and some results should be available this month. Infection was evident when plants were only an inch high, he said. Professor Philipson said this kind of disease usually entered only at wounds so that the tapping of rubber trees in harvesting obviously made them prone to attack. Bacterial infection could be of real, economic importance to the rubber industry.