CEREALS 



Cereal Smuts in General ^-^ 



Dark or black masses usually dusty, though sometimes 

 compact, replace floral parts, grain, glumes (chaff), or in 

 some cases involve the leaves and stem. The smut mass con- 

 sists almost wholly of the spores of the causal fungus which 

 gains entrance to the plants when they are in a susceptible 

 condition of development, the time varying with different 

 kinds of plants, and grows within the plant as an active 

 parasite, drawing its nourishment from its involuntary host. 

 When the host plant has attained the right age, and corre- 

 spondingly, too, the fungus has reached its proper stage of 

 maturity, the disease becomes apparent to the eye as the 

 familiar smut. 



Smut spores under suitable conditions of moisture, food, 

 and heat sprout, and produce smaller spores, sporidia, 

 which, if they fall upon the right host plant in the proper 

 period of its development, penetrate into it and grow. 

 The host plant may or may not outgrow its enemy. In 

 any event, its presence is not apparent to the naked eye 

 until the period of maturity arrives again, and another crop 

 of dark-colored spores is produced. 



Kinds of smut.^-*^ — In all, something more than 600 

 species are now recorded. Over 205 of these are founfl in the 

 United States, growing upon some 442 different kinds of 

 plants, most of which are unimportant and wild; although 

 some of them, such as the corn smut, 07iion smut, and the 

 smuts of wheat, oats, rye, barley attack plants of high eco- 

 nomic value and cause great damage. The yearly toll 

 from three of these that are easily preventable has been 

 estimated to be as high as 25,500,000 bushels of wheat, 

 110,000,000 bushels of oats, 6,000,000 bushels of barley. 

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