EEPORT OF OFFICE OF EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 149 



LOUISIANA. 



No. 1. Sugar Experiment Station, Audubon Park, New Orleans. 



No. 2. State Experiment Station, Baton Rouge. 



No. 3. North Louisiana Experiment Station, Calhoun. 



No. 4. Rice Experiment Station, Crowley. 



Department of Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical 



College. 



"W. R. DoDsoN. A. B., B. S., Director, Baton Rouge. 



The work at the Louisiana stations the past year was largely along 

 lines previously described and the changes in the station staff were 

 few in niunber. S. E. McClendon, assistant director of the State 

 station at Baton Rouge, took charge of the substation at Calhoun as 

 superintendent. The State appropriation for the biennium was 

 $10,000 annually, but in June, 1910, the amount was raised to $17,000 

 for each of the next two years. 



Progress was reported in most of the Adams-fund jjrojects. The 

 results of a long series of laboratory experiments with reference to 

 the nonsugars of sugar cane indicated ways and means b}'^ which a 

 decided improvement in the methods of clarification may be achieved. 



A report was made on the bean anthracnose investigation in Bul- 

 letin 119 of the station. In connection with life-history studies of 

 the disease it was found that the fungus will not stand a high per- 

 centage of acid in the medium in which it is grown, thus differing 

 from any other anthracnoses. It was further found that it does not 

 stand high temperatures and is killed out during summer in Louisi- 

 ana. Certain soil organisms, especially Fusarium, were found to 

 act against the disease. Valuable data regarding the mode of infec- 

 tion of the different organisms causing the cotton-boll rots were 

 obtained, and the study of fig diseases was completed with the prepa- 

 ration of the results for publication. Owing to a very dry spring, 

 red rot, rind disease, pineapple disease, and root rot of sugar cane 

 were troublesome during the season, and considerable time was de- 

 voted to the study of their life history, their distribution, and the 

 methods of combating them. The progress made in the alfalfa dis- 

 ease project has pointed out that the cause of the so-called stem 

 girdle is insect injury, and that the infecting fungus is identical 

 with the one causing sore shin of cotton and damping off in certain 

 plants. The study of rice smuts was turned over to representatives 

 of this department. 



The bacterial work on raw sugar and sugarhouse products brought 

 out the new and important fact that in the destruction of sugars by 

 microscopic organisms, an optically active body is formed, whose 

 presence in the sugar produces an error in analytical determinations 



