EMPIRE'S PLANT DOCTORS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17438, 9 April 1931, Page 12

EMPIRE'S PLANT DOCTORS

FIGHT AGAINST FUNGI NEW HEADQUARTERS AT KEW NEW ZEALAND'S SHARE IN WORK LONDON, .March 2 MiJlions of harmful fungi, ranging from tiny spores which can only be seen under a' microscope to huge flabby forest growths as big across as! an umbrella, in the last few weeks have been moved into a big £12.0t)0 banding just erected at Kew, near London. This is the new headquarters of the Imperial Myiologi.'al Institute, formerly the Bureau ol Mycology, which lias been built with the aid of an Kinpii'e Marketing Hoard grant. The institute is supported jointly by New Zealand and the other Dominions, the Colonies, and the Home Country, and houses specimens of fungi collected in every part of the Empire, and causing every sort of plant disease, from wheat rust to fruit rots, and . mosaic leaf diseases to root growths. Fungi are often jusi as destructive In Empire crops as insects. They are said lo cost New Zealand, for instance, no less than £2,221,500 worth of root and cereal crops every year. Rust has been estimated to do £5,000,000 worth o damage annually in Canada and up to £2,000,000 in New South Wales, and to ;:ause an annual world loss of C 60.000.000. Fungus pests of all soils destroy, it is said, aboat 15 per cent. of Australia's total crop production, or £15,000.000 worth of produce.

Coffee leaf d'sease (Hemiliea) cost Ceylon from £12,000,000 to £15,000.000 in the 10 vears following its appearance in 186&, and led to the abandonment o!' coffee 'cultivation in the island. In the Philippines coffee ceased to be profitable within a few years of the disease s appearance. Panama (lis ease of bananas caused the abandonment of nearly ICO.GOO acres of plantations in Central America belonging to a single company. Figures like this *could be given almost indefinitely to show that fungi are among the Empire's most expensive luxuries. PLANT DOCTORS AT KEW

Mycologists, scientists who are working to stem the loss, are the Empire's plant doctors. Almost every crop that grows comes, at one time or another, for treatment, diagnosis, advtee, or information to the institute at Kew. (Sisal is almost the only crop which is never attacked by bacteria or fungi). A strange plague yellows the leaves o ! the maize crop in Barbadoes; cassava roots growing near Nairobi develop mvsterio is tumours ; coconuts suddenly wither, half-rips, in the Seychelles, and little jars of diseased specimens are sent back by the first post to the distant doctors at Kew.

The new building stands on the famous Kew Green j by the side of the River Thames, and within sight of an old grey church where the painter Gainsborough is buried. The building has been so designed as to harmonise perfectly with its surroundings,

When a specimen arrives at the institute, of which Dr. E. J. Butler, F.R.S.. is director, it is inoculated in|o an artificial medium and is carefully cultivated. "Oaltures." as these miniature garden plots of fungi are, called, are usually grown on media such as beef jellv or agar-agar. Recently a new medium has been d : «">o'-orcd -oats. Fungi that absolutely refused to grow in other laboratories have fallen for the subtle flavor, and, like racehorses. flourished on the diet.

A FUNGI'S CALLED LAURA Not .1 week passes without some new and unnamed species of I'ung.is being received from overseas. When a new species has to be named that privilege often belongs to the man who sent it in. Many fungi have been christened in romantic ways. One. was called i.aurensis, after Laura, the wife of the discoverer. When the disease is diagnosed the overseas mycologist is sent a dossier of all that is known up to date about that particular fungus, and, in the case of colonial officers often working with inadequate laboratories and libraries, he is also furnished with a prescription to deal with it.

This is only half the institute's work. An equally important part is the collection of everv 'bit of information published in any part of the world. Papers in a dozen different languages are translated and the meat of them extracted to be served up in the Review of Applied Mycology, which finds its way to mycologists' in university laboratories, Government laboratories and tropteal plantations. The Empire is thus provided, by a joint effort, with machinery as complete, as is available for- research workers anywhere in the world. MOULDS THAT EAT BUTTER A scientist is now • studying at tho institute, on behalf of the New Zealand Government, a special family of moulds which eat butter. ,The same kind of fungi also damage copra, which contains a fat similar in chemical composition to batter-fat. Special facilities have been provided in the new building for overseas workers.

Fungi not only have a wide raii<;e of appetites but they will llourisb in a greater range of "climates than almost any other form of life. Some (such as the butter tribe) will grow and thrive when their temperature is below freezing point, and others enjoy themselves most on West African cocoa when it is 122 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. Co-operation between a Dominion and the institute at Kew recently solved an important problem in the marketing of British Columbia Sitka Spruce, a. leading timber for construction of aeroplane, propellers. It has to undergo very severe tests before use, and a large percentage of apparently sound timber tit one time had to be rejected. At first no trace could be found of any rots or tiseds. lut finally the tiny tentacles of a, fungus were observed. Then the problem was taken up in Canada. A Woman scientist went to British Columbia and discovered the villain of the piece on the growing trees. Infected trees are now eliminated before they are cut, and, further, transport is speedad up by overland carriage and the long torrid voyage through the Panama Canal avoided. Now the fungus has practically ceased to give trouble, BLACK ARM" IN COTTON FIELDS

The plant doctors of the bureau do jot always stay at home. Sometimes Miey "go the rounds" to bedsides of particularly suffering patients overwas, The' director is now in tho Sudan studying a cotton disease called "blackarm." which is caused by bacteria and is giving a good ileal of trouble. Recently it has spread to Uganda. Two years' ago Dr. Butler went to Nyasalnnd to investigate a new tea disease, and another officer visited Dominica to study wither tip of limes, which, first seen there in 1022, reduced the crop oil some estates by SO per cent, and has led In the abandonment of many plantations. "'Prevention is belter than cure" is as sound a piece of wisdom in mycology as in medicine. Ono of tho institute's hardest and most Important disks is to prevent the spread of plant diseases whi :h are at present localised. 1)t. Butler's stalf make a special study of the wbo)f* plant quarantine problem. An example of its importance is the "witch 'broom" djseas* tif «ftefto, *