INVISIBLE VIRUS

Feilding Star, Volume 8, Issue 2497, 10 March 1930, Page 7

INVISIBLE VIRUS

GERM THAT DEFIES SCIENTISTS HAVOC ON FARMS Rotliamstead. What is a virus? No one lias ever seen one, even with the strongest microscope. No on e reully knows whether it is tt liing or a dead thing. Rut w e do know that virus diseases pro increasing at an alarming rate in the world, and causing enormous damage and loss. Th e foot-and-mouth disease that plays havoc with our herds, the ruosiac disease that sometimes ruins our potato crops, and a similar disease that lias broken many a tomato grower, are all caused by a {virus. Tn Seuegumhiu, West Africa, it has nearly mad e a whole country bankrup, for iutely the virus has appeared there and attacked the staple industry—the peanut crop—upon which Senegambia's economic existence depends. Disease was never known there until recently, but the virus has- attacked their crops so fiercely that the Senegambians are now trying to find something else to grow to tak e the peanut’s place. It is because virus diseases ure so much on tli 0 increase that the Empire Marketing Bomrd decided to make a special grant to the experimental station at liothanistead to try to solve tlie mystery of liteir existence.

ENCOURAGING RESULTS Recently I saw Dr. IleudersonSuiith, who is in charge of tlies e investigations, in his laboratory at Itothamstead. "I can’t say anything definite yet,” lie told me, "except that results have been encouraging. W e have not yet found a cure so far as plant diseases are concerned, hut we hav e made progress. It may quite possibly be found thut the virus is a new form of life, -with methods of existence and means of reproduction quite different from anything we know.

"It is so minute that no microscope will show it, aud it can actually pass through a substance as solid us porcelain. It can stand terrific variations in temperature;, and enormous pressure, while it lias a remarkable resistance to strong disinfectants. This suggests that it is not a living organism. On the other hand its virulence, its infectbousness and the quiik way in which St will spread all over a plant encourages one tothink that it is living. Maybe its existence lies on some border line between life and death that our Instruments cannot yet probe.”

Dr. Henderson Smith is also investigating, wTtli the help of the Empire Marketing Boaa-d’ s funds, tne angular leaf siKit disease that it attack our cotton in the Sudan and causing losses or tens of thousands of pounds a year. By means of electrical apparatus cotton is about to be grown at liothanistead under wide variations of temperature and humidity Hi the iiop e of finding a cure for this disease tjiat is harming cotton crops al! over the world.