LOOSE SMUT OF WHEAT (“BLACK-HEADS”).

New Zealand Journal of Agriculture, Volume XXXVI, Issue 2, 20 February 1928, Page 91

LOOSE SMUT OF WHEAT (“BLACK-HEADS”).

The fungus which causes this disease is carried over from one crop to the next entirely within the seed, so that pickling the seed with bluestones or formalin, which fairly effectively controls stinking-smut (or "ball-smut’')- lias no effect on loose smut. The only practical way of avoiding loose smut is to use seed which has been harvested from a crop entirely free from "black-heads.” Since the spore masses of the fungus (which constitute the black-heads appear at flowering-time of the wheat-plant and are all blown away by harvest-time, it is impossible to tell from a sample of threshed grain whether it is infected or not. Until a system of seed-crop certification under proper supervision is instituted in New Zealand a grower is helpless in regard to this disease unless he has personally inspected the " crop from which he obtains his seed, soon after it emerges from the shot-blade.— J. C. Neill, Field Mycologist.

Mueller Medal for Research. The General Council of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, meeting this year, has awarded the Mueller Medal to Dr. L. Cockayne, F.R.S., of Wellington, for his researches in New Zealand botany extending over a period of twenty-five years.