THE 



JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



BRITISH AND FOREIGN. 



RUST AND MILDEW IN INDIA. 



By the late A. Barclay, M.B., F.L.S. 



(Plate 316.) 



In the course of my studies, now extending over several years, on 

 the group of parasitic fungi known to botanists as the Uredineae, my 

 attention has naturally been directed frequently to those species 

 which attack cereal crops, and are so destructive of them. 

 Indeed, as Mr. H. L. Bolley writes in a recently published bulletin,* 

 11 There is, perhaps, among the numerous diseases of our cereal 

 crops, not one that is, or can be, of more disastrous consequences 

 to the farmer than the various species of rust which attack his field 

 crops." Yet it is astonishing how little attention has been paid in 

 India to this source, sometimes of enormous loss, and always, 

 as appears probable, of considerable loss. Other fungi have been 

 the cause of immense and sometimes total destruction to other 

 crops, e.fl., the vine, potato, coffee, &c. ; but although these have 

 justly attracted much attention, I do not think any one of them can 

 compare in importance with the rust and mildew of cereal crops, 

 both because a failure of the former crops (with the exception 

 perhaps of the potato crop of Assam) withdraws only a direct 

 supply of luxuries, which are not usually enjoyed by the actual pro- 

 ducers, and because rust and mildew are a source of constant loss, 

 and directly affect the staple article of food of the labourers in 

 wheat-producing areas. We have, however, so far as I am aware, 

 and I have looked carefully for information iu every direction^ not 

 even the crudest approximate estimate of the geographical distri- 

 bution of the pest in our wheat-producing areas. Still less have we 

 any knowledge of the actual amount of loss sustained in the 

 out-turn of grain, either from attacked fields or from individual 

 plants. 



With regard to the geographical distribution of the disease, 

 there can, I think, be no doubt that it exists wherever wheat is 

 £rown. This statement is not a mere haphazard conjecture, but 

 is based on the known distributiou of the parasite in other parts of 



* Bulletin of the Agricultural Experiment Station of Indiana : H. L. Bolley, 

 July, 1S39. 



Journal of Botany. — Vol, 30. [January, 1892.] B 



