WAR AGAINST PESTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18927, 27 January 1925, Page 11

WAR AGAINST PESTS.

A MENACE TO PINEAPPLES. FIJI GOVERNMENT'S ACTION, [from, que own correspondent.] SUVA. Jan. 20. A special shipment of pineapple suckers was recently received here from Honolulu, and but for a protest from the prtes, might have been landed. On examination they were found to be almost wholly infected with thielaviopsis paradoxa, which causes soft rot and leaf spot in pineapples, base rot of pineapple slips, suckers, stumps and crowns, bleeding stem disease in cocoanuts, and pineapple disease in sugar-cane. Unfortunately this disease had been allowed to enter Fiji, but luckily it is so far restricted to three districts in the colony. As soon as the Government became aware of the threatened menace it took immediate steps to slop any chance of any more of this serious disease from entering the colony. The Acting-Governor had proclaimed that no pineapples will be permitted to enter the colony unless so dried or otherwise treated so that they cannot germinate. At the same time an Order-in-Council has decreed that the three districts, believed to be infected, be brought under the Diseases in Plants Ordinance, and immediate steps will be taken to destroy all plantations where any sign of the disease is found. As the Government has now a well-equipped scientific staff, with two more entomologists now on the way and also an analytical chemist, residents have confidence that, Fiji, at long last, is going to have a chance to clean up the few pests which we have in our territory. The parasites found by the colony's entomologist, Mr. Lea, in Malaya, are to be brought, direct to the colony at the end of the month, thus ensuring the safe arrival of the parasites of a moth very similar to the Levuana moth. 3t is. hoped that this will result in the control of this menace to our cocoanut industry. The Government is very much in earnest in the matter, and the Dominions can rest confident that no territory in the Pacific i.s more seriously facing the question of the suppression of pests than Fiji.