VERNALISATION

Northern Advocate, 15 July 1933, Page 8

VERNALISATION

A PLANT DISCOVERY. SPEEDING-UP PROCESS. (Special to “Northern A^v^cate.’’).. WELLINGTON, Friday. An amazing discovery that will revolutionise the planting of crops and other plants used for commerciaL purposes was described by Profosor,-H.~D. Kirk, in an address to the Wellington Horticultural Society. ■' • ; Professor Kirk said that the process/ known as vernalisation, made/ it path.* sible for certain phases of seed .development to bo got over.before l the seed wa* planted in the ground. The was 6nly two and a half years old,' and;, it was made at the.plant research stn- Vtion at Odessa. the discovery was in its applksatiori-tfl .wheat growing dn>'thevllkraino district;' ‘ \.i Wheat was .grown on the steppes of': Ukraine, but the summer.':there was very short and hot, and";only types of / wheat which came to maturity quickly, • " were used there, as most types of wheat would be .prematurely scorched. ; The: Ukraine wheat had been treated l by thenew process, and the result was-mitst successful, there being an increased \ yield of bran of 111 to 140 per cent, 'oil any previous crops there, or any untreated wheat. | Vernalisation was applied, said fessor Kirk, by germinating seeds Indoors at a temperature about 10 degrees , centigrade. Just before the.seeds began to sprout they were placed in a ; , granary, or any other place, where the temperature was at freezing point, and they were kept there from ten to fifteen days. Experiments had been made on * . tropical plants, and it was found possible to grow the soya bean as far north as Leningrad. r. After his address, Professor Kirk said in conversation with a reporter that the A process of vernalisation would not fee of practical importance to all countries, but mainly to those with short summers, where tropical and other growths re- * quiring the sun would have to, fee quickly brought to maturity. Most of the literature on vernalisation was in Russian, but he had obtained a translation into English of one work on it. r : The president of the Horticultural ’ Society, Mrs Knox Gilmer, in thanking; Professor Kirk for his addreas, said'’ that vernalisation would be of great use to South Island wheat growers ih avoiding late and early frosts. . t‘ v