30 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



incuts carried out under Mr. Stewart's immediate supervision 

 showed that the average annual loss, which the direct supervision 

 of a trained plant doctor might eliminate is over 100 bushels per 

 acre. An exceedingly small percentage of our potato growers 

 spray at all, and few or none with that thoroughness or effective- 

 ness which should certainly result, under the immediate direction 

 of a specialist in potato disease control. On a basis of average 

 acreage, yield, and price, this represents a total annual loss to the 

 potato growers of New York of approximately 810,000,000, a loss 

 which they themselves, by the application of known methods of 

 spraying, could save or an annual loss of about $20,000,000 which 

 might be saved by the employment of expert plant pathologists 

 to direct their potato disease control work. The average annual 

 loss from the loose smut of wheat in New York is not less than 5% 

 of the crop of wheat each year. Yet a practical and effective means 

 of saving this loss could be worked out and applied by properly 

 trained experts in the field. While it is difficult to get reliable 

 estimates of the annual losses from diseases of fruit and fruit 

 trees, one has only to compare the yield and quality of apples from 

 sprayed and unsprayed trees, season after season, to realize the 

 tremendous losses from apple scab and codling moth, or from peach 

 rot and curculio. Little peach and peach yellows, collar rot and 

 root rot, crown gall and many others of like nature, continue year 

 after year to take unchecked a heavy toll from our plant resource-. 

 The control of these maladies would swell tremendously the 

 gigantic annual crop production of this country. Wherever a 

 thorough and practical study of such a disease problem has been 

 made, it has almost always resulted in the discovery of an effective, 

 practical, and profitable method of control. One of the greatest 

 leaks in our modern agricultural business is that from pests and 

 diseases. It is a loss of gilt edged profits and the saving of it adds 

 but very little to the cost of production, even with the expense of 

 an expert to stop the leak. It certainly will pay to train and main- 

 tain, at the direct expense of the grower, expert plant pathologists. 



