76 SCIENTIFIC REPORTS OF THE AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH 



plant. This suggests that the disease is dependent on 

 humidity, the chief difference between the two seasons being 

 the abnormal dryness of that under report at the flowering 

 period. • 



Some damage was done by a new chilli disease, the cause 

 of which is unknown. It starts from the base of the forked 

 branches and is characterized by a dull black discoloration 

 of the green bark which travels up the limbs and down the 

 main branch. The black bark later becomes chalky-white, 

 the appearance being quite distinct from that caused by 

 die-back. On the white portions raised blisters appear and 

 these crack longitudinally. As a rule the injury is confined 

 to those parts of the plant facing south. No organism has 

 as yet been detected associated with the diseased condition. 

 The effect on the plant is to cause the upper parts to shed 

 their leaves and gradually die back. 



(5) Pythium disease of ginger, tobacco and papaya. 

 The work on this disease, commenced about three years ago 

 by L. S. Subramaniam, Third Assistant, was completed to 

 a stage justifying publication recently, and an account of 

 it is now in the press as a Memoir. 



*The parasite was first isolated from tobacco and subse- 

 quently from ginger and papaya. In all cases it proved to 

 be the same species and the strains from tobacco and ginger 

 were each found capable of attacking the other two hosts. 

 It has also been found in nature to cause a damping off of 

 chilli seedlings, and artificial inoculations with cultures 

 from tobacco and ginger gave successful infection of chilli, 

 castor and potato. The strain isolated from papaya has 

 hitherto only been tried on the same host, but from its simi- 

 larity to the others, and the readiness with which these 

 attack the papaya and produce the typical symptoms, it 

 may be expected that the papaya fungus will also attack 

 the other plants mentioned. There is, therefore, so far as 

 the experiments go, no indication that the fungus possesses 

 specialized races. 



On tobacco and chilli the attack is a simple damping off, 

 similar to that caused by Pythium de Baryanum. Large 



