CONTROL OF PLANT PESTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 61, 14 March 1939, Page 4

CONTROL OF PLANT PESTS

j Mysore has repaid to Australia a debt owed by South India. "When the prickly gear pest began to- overrun ' large areas, the authorities decided to I profit by the experience of Australia, where areas similarly threatened had been saved by the dissemination of the cochineal insect. This insect destroys prickly pear quickly and completely. Ceylon, in 1924, decided to copy Australia's example, and imported some of the insects from that country. Madras, impressed thereby, ( imported insects from Ceylon, and there too the results were good. Since then the insect has cleared large tracts of infested country, and cultivators nave been greatly assisted. Now Mysore has helped fruit growers in New South Wales by sending them an insect which is. a deadly enemy of the fruit-fly. Australia is grateful, and has written to. say so. The. Government of New South Wales did not keep this beneficial discovery to itself. Other parts of Australia have shared in its happy results, and even Fiji. Mysore's Entomological Department continues its labours, and already considerable progress has been made in raising parasites against sugarcane topborer moths. Collections of these parasites are regularly distributed throughout the sugar-growing districts, of Mysore "with beneficial results."