TOBACCO INDUSTRY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 23 January 1939, Page 11

TOBACCO INDUSTRY

EXPERIMENTAL STATION AT RIWAKA OUTLINE OF FIRST YEAR’S WORK

As reported in Saturday’s issue the Tobacco Research Station was officially opened by Dr. Marsden, Secretary of the Department of Industrial and Scientific Research

We give here a detailed report of the remarks of Mr J. M. Allan, officer in charge of the station Mr Allan said that during the season they had succeeded in getting under way the full research programme. It was a big programme and had taken considerable effort, in addition to the ground work of the establishment of the Research Station. Mr Allan said he was particularly anxious that no phase of tobacco research should be left out this year, as they could not regard any result from manurial and variety trials, etc., to be conclusive until the tests had been repeated for several years, taking in difficult seasonal conditions. To get them all going had meant saving a year in so far as results were concerned. The programme was yet to be extended to take in fertilisers and variety trials in co-operation with growers, on soil types not present at the station. That aspect of the work was impossible this season, owing to the extra work involved in getting constructional work done. Also they had to evolve a satisfactory working plan for co-operative experiments. Such experiments did not just mean putting out a few plants on a grower’s property with varying fertilisers, but the plants must receive practically the same attention, and be cured in the same way as the plants they were being compared with at the station. They could only evaluate the full utility of any variety or fertiliser of a particular soil type by taking into consideration both weight per acre and percentage of each grade, e.g., the bearing yield of lo\V grade leaf would not pay as well as a lower yield with a high percentage of better grades. The percentage of better grades, with a lesser extent yield, would, for instance, considerably influence the management of the crop and the curing. Before extending the work to other soil types, it was necessary to know what other soil types they should work with. With this as one of its objects, a survey of tobacco soils in the district had been undertaken by the Cawthron Institute, and considerable progress had been made during the winter and spring.

Mr Allan added that he had put up a map made at the Cawthron Institute showing the progress of the work to date. They would notice that so far it took in most of the Riwaka area, and the work was proceeding as time permitted. The soil survey had also shown that while tobacco was mostly grown on soil types considered suitable for tobacco, the crop was to be found on small areas of what would not generally be classed as good tobacco soil, while other areas suitable for tobacco were under other crops and pasture. In addition to the main soils’ map a very detailed soil map was made of the Research Station, with much finer divisions in the soil types. This map had been the basis for the layout of the experiments. He had endeavoured to confine each experiment to a particular soil type or associated group of similar soils, and the plots of any particular treatment in the experiment are randomised over the area in such a way as to belance soil irregularities. He would like to mention that the work of establishing this research station and getting their research programme under way had been very ably assisted by the work of the permanent staff, Mr R. C. Mickell and Mr L. G. Copp. They had both put every effort into the work, and what had been accomplished to date had been to a large extent made possible by their efForts.

The experiment programme commenced with the seed beds, and investigaI tions were made into many problems associated with the beds. Mr Allan said he proposed only to deal with those investigations in which definite results were obtained, and leave thj other experiments until the results had been confirmed by future work. A manurial experiment clearly showed the necessity for quite heavy manuring in the seed bed. In a bed that received no manure the seedlings did not attain transplanting size. When the rest of the seedlings were transplanted into the field those in the bed were only 2 inches high and very yellow and woody. In a

bed receiving |lb standard manure per square yard the plants reaching transplanting size, but commenced to yellow soon afterwards, indicating that the fertiliser had been exhausted. In beds receiving lib fertiliser to the square yard, the plants made more rapid growth, and had sufficient reserves in the bed to enable seedlings left there to continue to grow without symptoms of starvation In an experiment to find the most satisfactory number of seedlings per box for pricking out, boxes with 1200 gave the best results. When boxes contained 2000 or more seedlings, many had to be discarded at pricking out, and quite a number did not take. A number of seed beds were sown with seed at the same time as boxes of the same seed were sown in ♦he glasshouse, and at intervals up to three w’eeks later, other beds were sown. These beds were never pricked out. but transplanted into the field at the normal planting time. Germination commenced in 12 days. The entire growth was slower than in the glasshouse, but sown after the time of pricking out the glasshouse seedlings, those in the beds soon caught up. and at planting time were equal and in some cases even larger than those from the glassnousc. Even those sown at the later dat? were approximately the same size as '.h'i first sown. These plants w-ould be later referred to in the field programme as bed-raised plants. Proceeding, Mr Allan said that only four seedlings were found affected with mosaic in the bed-sown plants, whereas hundreds were found affected int! e pricked-out seedlings. This he thought might be attributed to soil infection The area on which the seed-beds were placed carried a heavily infected crop last season, and presumably the so ; l re mained heavily infected. In the case of the seed-beds on which seed was sown direct, the roots grew out normally into the soil, and no broken tissue came into contact with the infected soil. In the case of pricked-out plants, every piecaution was taken to prevent the spread of mosaic, e.g., no smoking, the workers washed their hands from time to time, and so on. However, it would seem as though mosaic was picked up on the hands from the soil, and infection occurred when hands came in contact with broken tissues, or when such tissues came in contact with the soil. Mr Allan said he might mention that the same seed was used for the bedsown and pricked-out plants. Transplanting into the field was carried out between the 4th and 15th November, at first under favourable conditions, but during dry windy weather at the finish. Most of the plants started well but then a period of strong winds set in and growth was more or less stationary for weeke. On several light sandy areas along the Brooklyn road boundary, the plants were severely affected by wind-blown sand and quite large patches had to be replanted. The re-plants had made poor growth and gave the area concerned a very uneven appearance. They would notice these areas as they went around in variety trials and one fertiliser experiment. For this reason several varieties and part of the fertiliser test would have to be excluded from the results for the season. During the strong winds of the last week the crop had been to some extent damaged over the entire area. Such damage would be noticed during the inspection of the plots. The crop was not a good one, that, he thought, being due to the season, and the same general effect of the adverse growing conditions was to be noticed in most crops in the district. Mr Allan said he had hoped for a better result in the initial year, but from a research point of view, it was better to strike an adverse season now than later on, as after all this year was a preliminary one and if they did not get responses they expected from the various experimental treatments, they would at least have established their lines of work. Next year they could smooth out any irregularities and carry out the experiments in a form calculated to give the best results.

However, all experiments had been set out and carried on in the way they hoped to carry them on in the future and it would give growers an opportunity of seeing what work was being done and how they would propose to do it. EXPERIMENTAL PROGRAMME Coming to the experimental programme, they had adopted as their standard variety, Harrison’s Special. It was used throughout the experiment except in the variety trials.

The standard fertiliser was derived from the basic formula used extensively in U.S.A., Canada, Australia, and other tobacco growing countries. It was intended that they used this as their starting point and varied it until they established the best formula for use on each of the main tobacco soil types in New Zealand. Most of the fertiliser experiments were designed to investigate the essentials of the best fertiliser for tobacco in the light of recent U.S.A. and other overseas researches, and to see how far those recommendations applied to tobacco growing in New Zealand.