A DANGEROUS TOBACCO DISEASE APPEARS 

 IN THE UNITED STATES. 



At telegraphic request of Florida tobacco growers, the tobacco 

 seed beds in the vicinity of Quiney, Fla., were visited on March 29, 

 1921. and found badly infected with a mildew which was at once 

 recognized as being different from any tobacco disease previously 

 observed by us in the United States and one in certain respects 

 similar to the diseases reported from Malaysia and Australia. 



The disease made its appearance in Gadsden County, Fla., on four 

 widely separated seed beds at about the same time, i. e.. about March 

 21. 1921. although in one of these cases the farm superintendent 

 reported that one end of a bed showed something wrong with it about 

 a week earlier. Of the four beds referred to. two had been steam 

 sterilized by the inverted-pan method every year for a number of 

 years, one was a new swamp bed that had been burned, and the 

 fourth, which was possibly a day later than the others in showing 

 the infection, was not sterilized in any way. According to the state- 

 ments of the tobacco growers, the disease usually made its appear- 

 ance near one end and then spread over the rest of the bed. in some 

 cases by direct enlargement of the infected spot and in other cases 

 through the development of other small infected spots and the sub- 

 sequent enlargement of them. In most cases the entire bed became 

 diseased within a week from the time of the appearance of the first 

 infected spot in the bed. By April 5 the mildew had spread to at 

 least 26 seed beds in Gadsden County and by April 8 it was reported 

 from a number of seed beds in the adjoining county (Decatur) in 

 Georgia. In all probability by this time (April 14) all of the to- 

 bacco seed beds in Gadsden County, Fla., and Decatur County, Ga., 

 are more or less infected. In brief, practically all of the cigar- 

 wrapper area in the Florida-Georgia district is now infected with 

 this disease, and the tobacco growers in this region have been on the 

 verge of a panic because there are not enough healthy tobacco plants 

 in sight to set out the fields. This district is the oldest cigar- wrapper 

 area in the United States, and millions of dollars of capital are 

 endangered. 



At the time this disease made its appearance this Florida-Georgia 

 region had been suffering from a lack of rainfall, although this in 



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