TESTING OF SEEDS

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30576, 20 October 1964, Page 5

TESTING OF SEEDS

Colombo Plan Course Bearded Sikhs, Afghans, and a lone representative of Laos, will be among 30 to 35 delegates from Asian countries to a course to be held by the Department of Agriculture at Palmerston North for three weeks in November and a final week in Canterbury. Sponsored by the Colombo Plan, the course will consist of a series of advanced study groups at the department’s seed testing station at Palmerston North against a background of germination and purity tests of seeds such as rice, wheat, and millet, and also on grass seeds, duplicating a variety of conditions found in tropical, sub-tropical, and temperate zones. The superintendent of the station (Mr A. V. Lithgow) is a member of the executive of the International Seedtesting Association, and is familiar with the work already being done in many Asian centres.

Most of the delegates are on Colombo Plan awards, two of them being the first Afghanistan trainees to come to New Zealand. But in general they are university graduates holding high agricultural posts. Some are already experts on seed testing in their own countries, notably the two from the Philippines. Others are not connected with the Colombo Plan. Five are Australians, and one is a Vietnam student who recently completed a bachelor of agricultural science degree in New Zealand and is in his final year here. The delegates will arrive at Wellington by air from Sydney on November 7 and the same afternoon most of them will go by special flight to Palmerston North. On November 27 they will fly to Christchurch, spend the weekend at the Hermitage, and on the following Monday morning begin a final week’s work at Lincoln, which will include an inspection of seed growing areas and seed cleaning plants in Canterbury.