Disease in pines

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33740, 13 January 1975, Page 12

Disease in pines

Sir, —A Wellington report (“The Press,” December 27), that Forest Service officials have been unable to identify

a disease affecting pine trees in central Hawke’s Bay makes strange reading. In contrast, a report from the Ministry of Agriculture in at least one southern Hawke’s Bay newspaper (the “Evening News”) says that the cause of death appears to be a their own traffic department, fungus which attacks fine root hairs on radiata pine. A large number of pines are dying in the district, varying from whole plantations to isolated trees. The symptoms are set out. There is no control except resistant strains. In 1957 a survey of the North Auckland peninsula by the Forest Service and the D.S.T.R., after a similar outbreak of disease in pines, showed that mortality or severe defoliation was present on 869 out of 1570 sites on which pine was growing. Why, then, radiata pine on the’West Coast?—Your, etc., VULCAN. December 30, 1974. [The Director-General of Forests (Mr M. J. Conway) replies: “The North Auckland study was restricted to shelter belts and small woodlots, and phytophthora has not prevented the successful afforestation of pines on a large scale in that region. The recent mortality in Hawke’s Bay is, similarly, mainly in old radiata pine and cypresses in farm shelter belts and has not definitely been attributed by scientists to phytophthora. In any event, this fungus presents no- threat to afforestation in Hawke’s Bay. Vulcan has been answered previously in your columns with regard to pines on the West Coast. There is no reason for believing that radiata pine will suffer abnormal mortality there.”]