RESEARCH CONFERENCE

Waikato Times, Volume 102, Issue 17223, 5 October 1927, Page 7

RESEARCH CONFERENCE

ANIMAL AND PLANT PESTS. PARASITE ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN. TESTED & WARRANTED PARASITES (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, October 3. The Imperial Agricultural Research Conference, which is the first of its kind, will be opened in London to-mor-row. About 170 delegates from all parts of the British Empire will be present and the conference will last a month. The time will be occupied with a long programme of discussions and committee work, and visits to numerous research stations in the country. One of the most important subjects on the agenda is that of animal and plant pests. The members of the conference will have before them the recent developments of applied science in its efforts to combat these pests. In an article on this subject in the Evening Standard the Professor of Zoology at King's College, London, Mr Julian Huxley, says noxious insects such as the cotton boll weevil and the Gipsy moth inflict damage on the British Empire to an amount of tens of millions of pounds in a few months. There are, he says, noxious plants 1 such as the prickly pear, which last year robbed Australia of an acre of i land every minute, or the blackberry | in New Zealand, which in its new enj vironment has formed impenetrable jungles over thousands oi acres of what was once fine dairying land. Luckily these insects and these weeds have, says Mr Huxley, also their own particular insect enemies, and many of these latter attack nothing but one animal or plant. Mr Huxley says that under the auspices of the Empire Marketing Board a "Parasite Zoological Garden" has been established in England, from which duly tested and warranted parasites may be shipped to all quarters of the Empire to help to destroy animal and plant pests.

LATER. EMPIRE CO-OPERATION. GREAT GATHERING OF EXPERTS. SPEECH BY BRITISH MINISTER. (Received October 5, 10.30 a.m.) LONDON, October 4. Dr. C. J. Reakes (Director-General of Agriculture) and Mr Theodore Rigg (Assistant-Director of the Cawthron Institute of New Zealand, are attending the Imperial Agricultural Conference.

Right Hon. W. E. Guinness (British Minister of Agriculture) in welcoming the delegates, expressed the opinion that never had such knowledge and experience of experts from the whole Empire previously been concentrated to assist the Empire's greatest industry. In this time of complexity and change, those industries which were allowed to stand still were quickly left behind. Research must be used to improve agriculture, which was the giant pillar of the Empire's life and prosperity. As an example of Empire co-operation, he mentioned the Aberdeen institute's research of the mineral contents of pastures, which had been linked up with similar work in Australia, New Zealand and Kenya. The conference would ensure that each part of the Empire would be educated in the others' research discoveries.