STRAWBERRY BLIGHT

Taranaki Daily News, 18 October 1927, Page 9

STRAWBERRY BLIGHT

A MYSTERIOUS DISEASE. NORTHCOTE AREAS .SUFFER. Strawberry growers at Northcote, Auckland, are alarmed at the proportions assumed by the mysterious blight affecting their crops. One estimate places the losses at 20 per cent, of the total plants, while some individual growers have lost nearly half their crops. The losses are likely to affect materially the supplies of strawberries available during the coming season, as approximately one-third of the Auckland supply is grown at Northcote. Opinion is divided as to the nature of the malady which causes the plants to wither and die when the humid winter conditions give place to drier weather. Many of the growers are convinced that a fungoid disease has been introduced into the district, and have attempted to remedy the matter on that supposition. The opinion has also been advanced that the disease is caused through a form of soil staleness, the result of growing the same crop year after year. Another suggestion is that the trouble arises from excessive top-dressing with acid artificial manures, and that the very attempts to counteract the supposed disease have only aggravated it. Supporters of this view adduce as evidence instances where the dead plants are thickest in depressions of the ground into which the top-dressing would be washed by the rain. The Department of agriculture is making a close study of the problem, but as yet has reached no definite conclusion. The loss involved is a serious one for the growers owing to the heavy cost of f 'duction. The cost of planting and cultivating one plot of lj acres intended to carry 50,000 plants, was stated to be £2OO. The revenue from a good crop .was expected to be about £5OO. No signs of the supposed disease have (been reported elsewhere,