Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 January 1914 — OATS SMUT ABUNDANT [ARTICLE]

OATS SMUT ABUNDANT

[National Crop Improvement Service.) There is very much smut in th* oats this year. During the last two weeks I have examined many fields and have found in many instances from 5 to 10 per cent of the plants affected by smut. In one instance the percentage of smut was as high as 15 per cent. Every plant affected by smut produces no grain but it requires just as much plant food from the soil as a healthy plant. The plants affected by smut are not usually so tall as the others and so are not conspicuous. Farmers have told me they had never noticed any smut in their oats even though the count showed as much as 5 per cent of the Clants affected. On the basis of a M ushel yield of oats 5 per cent of smut would mean a decrease of 2% bushels per acre and 10 per cent of smut would mean a loss of 5 bushel* per acre while the worst field I found having 15 per cent of smut will have a loss of over 7 bushels per acr* from that cause. The loss from oats smut can be easily prevented. Treating seed oats with formaldehyde every three year* is sufficient. The formaldehyde treatment will cost about three cents an acre for the year that it is applied, or an average of one cent per acre per year for the materials. There is little work connected with the treatment When oats can be treated so cheaply there is no reason for any one sustaining a loss of from five to seven bushels per acre.—E. T. Robbins.