PLANT RESEARCH

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22971, 24 February 1938, Page 12

PLANT RESEARCH

It is evident from details of the buildings to be erected on the Plant Research station at Mount Albert, that complete facilities are to be provided for the work that will be done there. This work is important enough to justify all the provision being made for it. In the division of functions involved by the Government's plans for comprehensive research, the Mount Albert station will specialise on the diseases of, and problems connected with the growing of, fruit and vegetables. The field is a wide one. If the damage caused in a single seasonespecially one so warm and humid as the present summer has been — could be accurately estimated, the result would probably shock the whole community. Even then the entire story would not be told, for there is no way of allowing for the extent to which people have simply given up the attempt to produce fruit and vegetables because of the inroads of diseases and pests. A younger generation is often told of the good old days when peaches of first-class quality could be bought in the streets of Auckland, an incredible quantity for. one shilling. Knowing something of insect pests and fungoid and virus diseases, the young New Zealander could be pardoned for scepticism. Yet the picture is a true one. The soil and climate that once were so favourable to the growth of the fruit have proved equally kindly hosts to the pests that now prey on it. In this instance science is being called on to put back the clock, to the days when fruit free of disease could be ripened without continuous recourse to the spray pump and a whole laboratory full of chemicals. If the ravages of brown rot alone could be checked, the production and supply of stone fruits would be put on a new basis. These things are typical of the work before the research station, for which a proper home is shortly to be provided.