TREATING BARLEY SEEDS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, Issue 208, 17 August 1927, Page 7

TREATING BARLEY SEEDS

PREVENTING RUST AND INCREASING YIELD.

Striking results have been obtained from hot-water treatment of barley seed in a manner devised by Mr Cunningham, mycologist in the Government laboratory.- Experiments over two season show an increase in yield of from 15 per cent to 26 per cent., and an impressive improvement in the grading of the product. Untreated seed sown in 1925-26 yielded 40.7 bushels per acre, while treated seed yielded 57.3 bushels. In 1926-7, after modification of the treatment to which the seed/was subjected, the yield ruse to 67.84 bushecls per acre. These figures are for first only. All this barley was absolutely free from smut.

Last season, also, some seed obtained from the crop raised in 1925-6 was sown at Leeston in Canterbury ad also was supplied to twenty farmers growing barley under contract in the Ellesmere district. This seed, “once removed from treatment,” yielded 62 bushels per acre, whereas the crop from untreated seed averaged 65.32 bushels per acre. At the s#me time, the percentage of first grade seed rose from 81.97 to 96.8, seconds stood at 3.2, instead of 8.85, and there were no thirds.

The treatment arose from the development of Mr Cunningham’s theory that smut was a seed-borne disease. In may, 1925, 100 bushel lots of Kihve|, Chevalier, and Plumage varieties were placed in special hessian bags in 301 b lots and soaked in water held at 80 degrees Farenhcit for six to eight hours, after which they were dipped for ten minutes in water kept at 127 degrees. On removal from the dip the bags were cooled and emptied on to the drying floor of a malt-klin, to be dried at a temperature of from 90 to 100 degrees for 24 hours. After this they were dropped to 85 to 90 degrees for a further 30 hours. FREE FROM SMUT. The seed so treated was supplied to Canterbury farmers growing barley under contract. The spring of 1925 was cold and wet, sowing was greatly delayed, the soil in bad condition, and germination delayed. Thus the treated grain came through so slowly that several growers ploughed up the whole or part of their treated seed. However, sufficient area was iett to show that the treated seed, after making an apparently bad start, caught up with, and finally surpassed’, the untreated seed in yield and ’quality. Moreover, it was absolutely free from smut in a year In which smut was particularly prevalent and destructive in all crops raised from seed which had been treated by the customary bluestone or formalin methods.

Last year, acting on the experience gained, the time of dipping the seed in water at 127 dgrees was reduced from ten minutes soaking (six to eight hours) was altered to five to six hours at 78 degrees. The germinative vigour of the seed was thus much less adversely affected. Seeds obtained dur ing the first experiment, threshed by a disinfected machine, and resown last year, remained free from smut, but other seed of the same crop which was threshed through an ordinary combine became sligtly reinfected.