2 BULLETIN 562, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



western Florida and southern Georgia, and in several foreign coun- 

 tries. The disease was first brought to public attention in this 

 country in 1903, when its occurrence in Granville County, N. C, was 

 described in separate publications by E. E. B. McKenney (5), 1 of 

 the Bureau of Plant Industry of the United States Department of 

 Agriculture, and F. L. Stevens and TV. G. Sackett (10), of the Xorth 

 Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station. Because of the possible 

 existence of other tobacco wilts Stevens and Sackett designated the 

 disease in question " Granville wilt," from the name of the county in 

 which it was first definitely recognized. Additional information 

 regarding the occurrence and nature of the disease is contained in a 

 bulletin by Erwin F. Smith (7) which appeared in 1908. 



It is not known when the wilt first appeared in the flue-cured dis- 

 trict of southern Virginia and the Carolinas, but it seems to have 

 been known to the farmers of Granville County at least as early as 

 1881. As a result of extensive investigations in this countr} 7 and in 

 the Dutch East Indies and Japan, it appears to have been definitely 

 established that a wilt of tobacco which has long existed in the latter 

 countries is identical with the Granville wilt (8). 2 In this country, 

 tobacco growers in sections where the disease is known speak of it 

 simply as tobacco wilt, and this name is retained in the present 

 bulletin. 



Since it first came under observation in Granville County, the 

 wilt has continued to spread, and usually when a field once be- 

 comes infested subsequent crops of tobacco are increasingly at- 

 tacked until a practically complete failure of the crop results. The 

 wilt is an exceedingly destructive disease locally, and in the south- 

 ern portion of Granville County it has caused the abandonment of 

 tobacco culture on man}^ farms. The disease has been most destruc- 

 tive in the region which enjoys the reputation of producing the finest 

 quality of flue-cured tobacco grown in the country, and the aggre- 

 gate loss to farmers is very large, although difficult to estimate ac- 

 curately. The loss is serious every year, although varying con- 

 siderably, depending on seasonal conditions. The plants are killed 

 outright and a loss of 25 to 40 per cent is not unusual, while on 

 many fields the crop is practically a total loss. Should the disease 

 become destructive throughout the flue-cured district it would practi- 

 cally stop the production of this type of tobacco, the annual value of 

 which is 30 million dollars. 



1 Serial numbers in parentheses refer to " Literature cited." page 20. 



2 The disease in Sumatra appears to have been first studied by Janse (4) in 1892 and 

 later by Van Breda de Haan (1) and Honing (2), who spoke of it as a " slime sickness." 

 According to Uyeda (11) the disease is known in Japan as stem-rot, black-leg, and wilt 

 disease and was mentioned in a book on tobacco culture published in 1881. 



