CLUB ROOT

Southland Times, Issue 18938, 11 May 1923, Page 6

CLUB ROOT

LIME TREATMENT USELESS. At the Browns Field Day yesterday Mr R. B. Tennent, Instructor in Agriculture for Otago and Southland, gave Kime interesting information about the disease of club root in turnips and other allied crops. This disease had caused considerable trouble in Southland of late and it was at the request of several prominent farmers that Mr Tennent spoke on the subject. In text books, said Mr Tennent, lime was said to be an effective cure but he would say without hesitation that this was quite fallacious. Experiments were being made all over the world to try to discover an antidote but without success. No spray or chemical has' been found to be any use. The Ohly known method obviating the disease was by the correct rotation c.f crops. Any paddock infected with club root should be left for a period of at least sit years and sown during that period only with crops such as grassy wheat and oats which were’not susceptible to the disease. Mr Tennent also stressed fact that club root was essentially an infectious disease and could be transmitted from orie place to another by horses, sheep, cattle and even farm implements. A Danish turnip had recently been imported which was supposed to be immune from the disease but it had been found at the Winton experimental plot that this turnip took the disease as badiy as the other varieties. This might be doe to 'the fact that the plant was weakened by acclimatisation, and experiments would be continued with it. In any case lime was absolutely useless. At Wintdn they had tried putting as much as 16 tons of lime to the acre, and the crops in the ground thus treated were :still quite, austeptible’ to the disease.