CROP DISEASES

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 183, 4 July 1936, Page 7

CROP DISEASES

AVORK OF RESEARCH BUREAU. AVELLINGTON, July 3. Tho control of crop diseases was discused by Air J. C. Neill, field mycologist, of the Plant Research Bureau, Palmerston North, in an address yesterday at the annual conference of the Royal Agricultural Society. To the individual farmer, said Air Neill, the loss of profit through disease was serious enough, but the sum of those losses over the whole country represented a still more serious reduction of the national wealth. Startling figures had been published by trustworthy and competent observers in assessing the annual loss of wealth through crop disease in other countries. In New Zealand they had little exact data to go on since no annual disease survey had been carried out-, but the loss must run into several million pounds. A careful survey of the oat crops of Otago made a few years ago showed that in this one province alone one easily preventable disease, smut, caused a loss of approximately £50,000 for the season. The function of the Plant Disease Division at the Plant Research Bureau was to find means whereby these losses might | be reduced so that the farmer and the ' Dominion might reap better returns from the labour and capital expended on the laqd. The work of the division , was divided into two fairly well defined groups of problems, those connected with the orchard industry, and those of general farm and garden crops.