Rensselaer Republican, Volume 28, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 December 1895 — Page 5 Advertisements Column 4 [ADVERTISEMENT]

TREATMENT OF CORN SMUT. Purdue University Agricultural Ex- , periment Station. Newspaper Bulletin, No. 16, N0v,22 1895. b , The smut in corn differs in several important particulars from the common smut of the smaller cereals, wheat, oats, rye and barley. In no respect is the difference more marked than in its mode of attacking the plant, and in this fact lie valuable hints to the cultivator. It has been assumed that because the smut of wheat and oats can be prevented by immersing-the seed in hot water or a solution of some fungicide, the same method is applicable to corn. But it is not true, and for the reason that the method by which the corn smut attacks the plant is very unlike that of most of the other cereal smuts.

Two things can be done to decrease smut in corn. The growing crop can be sprayed with n suitable fungicide and the entrance of the smut into the plant prevented. That this can be made effective is shown by experiments at the Indiana station. But it is an expensive and troublesome method. The other, more convenient but less thorough, TSielhod, is to gather and destroy the smut, and thus eventually rid tlife | liieldß of it. ! It is evident from this that neither the time of planting nor the previous condition or treatment of the seed will have any effecj, upon the amount of smut in the crop; and experiments already carried out substantiate this deduction. It is equally evident that meteorological conditions will have decided influence. But the farmer cannot control the weather. It has been found out at the Indiana Experimental Station that, the smut does not attack the plant through the seed, but like wheat rust it starts in the leaves and stems, wherever the spores are carried by the wind and find lodgment and suf ficient moisture to enable them to germinate. The spores will grow as soon as ripe, that is as soon as the masd containing them turns back, and they will al#o retain their vitality for a year or two in caae conditions for growth are not favorable. 7 "The best time to gather the smut is just before the ears silk, ,*Yhen the fieldfShoald Y>e gone through and every signs of smut removed, being careful not to scatter it upotf' the ground, or in any way }et the spores get fiee. The. ust be burned or deeply buried, to certainly