308 STATE BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



OAT SMUT. 



BY G. H. COONS. 

 THE DISEASE. 



Oat Smut is u fuugous disease iu wliicli the whole head becomes a 

 mass of brownish black powder. No grain is formed. Smutted plants 

 are usually stunted and hence often overlooked in the field. 



THE CAUSE OF THE DISEASE. 



This disease is caused by a parasitic fungus — a small plant which 

 makes no food for itself but steals its living from the oat. The body of 

 the smut fungus is made up of threads microscopic in size which live in- 

 side the oat plant, growing up with it, and finally producing its own 

 kind of fruit where the oat kernel should be produced. This fruiting 

 mass of the oat fungus is the brown smutty powder. It is made up of 

 countless thousands of exceedingly minute balls. These balls are the 

 "seed" of the smut fungus. They are called spores. 



THE COURSE OF THE DISEASE. 



These seedlike bodies, the spores, are mature at threshing time. The 

 air about the machine is sometimes black with them, and the smut rises 

 in clouds. They get into the crevices of the grain and entangled in the 

 bristles. When the grain sprouts, the smut fungus sprouts too and bores 

 into the J'oung seedlings. Smut treatment kills the spores ("seeds" of 

 the smut fungus) on the grain without hurting the oats. Smutted oats 

 give smutted pJants, disinfected oats give clean, healthy plants. When 

 the oat matures, the smut which has bored into the plant and which has 

 been keeping pace with its growth, matures too. The same story is re- 

 peated year after j'ear, at an enormous cost to the farmer's pocketbook. 



LOSSES CAUSED. 



It is not too much to say that 3'ear in and year out, smut destroys 5 

 to 10% of the Michigan oat crop. This amounts to irearly a million dol- 

 lars annually. The oat smut's board bill costs the average farmer with 

 10 acres of oats |50.00 a year. He pays more to keep this parasite than 

 he pays for schools. What the average farmer loses in one year from 

 Oat Smut would pay his share in the tax that supports the Michigan 

 Agricultural College 300 years. If the Agricultural College did nothing 

 else than tell the farmer the well knoAvn facts about Smut, its existence 

 would be justified ! 



OAT SMUT IS ENTIRELY PREVENTABLE. 



Clean the oats of all weed seeds, chaff, and light grains by means of a 

 fanning mill. 



Fight oat smut either by the well known sprinkling method or by the 

 new concentrated Formaldehyde Treatment devised by K. J. Haskell of 

 Cornell University. 



