THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1933. THE CAWTHRON INSTITUTE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22067, 25 September 1933, Page 8

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1933. THE CAWTHRON INSTITUTE

Like a number of other institutions the Cawthron Institute is feeling the effect of a curtailment of monetary grants' which have helped it in. the energetic prosecution of its work. It has the greater reason, therefore, to look for support from the farmers' organisations. But when the matter of a monetary contribution to the Institute was recently brought before a Dominion conference of fruitgrowers, some rather discouraging comment was offered by Mr J. Campbell, Director of the Horticultural Division. A reply to this, published by us on Friday last, in the form of a letter from the Cawthron Institute Trust Board, was accompanied by a memorandum on the contributions of the Institute to fruit research, some of the salient points in which merit attention. The Board certainly seems to be justified in regarding the observations of the Director of Horticulture as somewhat disparaging to the Institute. Mr Campbell stated that while he gave the Institute every credit for its work, it was not sufficiently closely associated with the fruit industry from a practical point of view, whereas the greater part of the Department's experimental work was " scientific and practical combined, and should be carried out by an organisation working v absolutely for the fruit industry." It would be an unwarranted inference from this that, because the Cawthron Institute does not concentrate absolutely on the fruit industry, it is not rendering, or has not rendered to it, great service by its researches during the fourteen years of its existence. Failure in respect of a large area of commercial orchards planted on poor Moutere Hill country in the Nelson district was apparently inevitable unless remedial measures could be devised. Experiments conducted by the Cawthron Institute contributed greatly to the success that was finally attained when the requirements of the soil had been ascertained by tests. The Institute controls experimental blocks which are proving invaluable, it is claimed, in studies relating to the effect of manurial treatment not only on yield of fruit but on tree development and quality of fruit in cool store. The prevalence of disease in apples in cool store has caused great losses to growers, and an active investigation by the Institute has produced results that have proved valuable in the control of disease and in laying down temperature standards for the carriage of export fruit. Control of fungal diseases, such as " black spot" in apples and pears, has been one of the Institute's objectives for

years. The codlin moth has received its earnest attention, and a parasite for its control has been imported and will probably be successfully bred in the Dominion. The leaf-rolling caterpillar, the apple leaf-hopper, the bronze beetle, the mealy-bug, and the earwig are other enemies of the orchardist with which the Institute has been coping; brown rot in stone fruit has been the subject of a continuous four years' experiment, which has demonstrated that the disease can be systematically controlled; and the small fruit industry has benefited considerably by the interest which the Institute has taken in its well-being. The record seems to leave no room for any doubt whatever that the fruit-grower has received a very large share of the great volume of advisory work carried out by the Cawthron Institute for the benefit of the primary producers. One of the delegates to the fruitgrowers' conference expressed the opinion that the introduction and distribution by it throughout the orchard districts of a parasite that has enabled woolly aphis to be almost completely controlled would in itself be ample justification for the Institute's existence. In the circumstances the ground for any suggestion that the work of the Institute is less effective than it might be because it is not controlled by any central authority is not apparent.