A Study of Meadow-Crop Diseases in New York 5 



SURVEY OF THE MEADOW-CROP DISEASES OF THE STATE 

 THE NECESSITY OF A METHOD FOR DETERMINING LOSS 



The necessity of having a satisfactory method for determining which 

 are the important diseases, and for determining their distribution and their 

 severity, has been impressed upon the writer repeatedly during the past 

 three years. Pathologists have worried long over the problem of deter- 

 mining the importance, both relative and absolute, of leaf and stem 

 diseases. Tehon (1927) has made an interesting study of losses caused by 

 cereal diseases, but his method seems laborious. In 1928 an investigation 

 of methods for determining the losses from meadow-crop diseases was 

 undertaken. The writer realizes that the method described herein fails to 

 fulfill all the requirements of perfection, but it is presented in the hope 

 that it may be a contribution toward that end. The technic was developed 

 as fully as the time available permitted. First, it was determined where 

 the most hay was grown; then, during June, just prior to the first cutting, 

 a survey trip was made through these regions, stopping frequently and 

 determining as nearly as possible what diseases were present and how 

 destructive they were. Thus a random sample of the meadow-crop diseases 

 of the State was procured which served as a basis for arranging the diseases 

 in the relative order of their importance and for calculating the losses that 

 they bring about. During the course of the work 194 fields in 35 counties 

 were examined. As a rule, no two stops were made within five miles of 

 each other. 



DISTRIBUTION OF MEADOW CROPS 



Method of determining meadow -crop distribution 



The distribution of hay crops in the State was obtained from the 1925 

 Agricultural Census by calculating the percentage of crop land, by counties, 

 devoted to each kind of hay — - timothy alone, timothy and clover mixed, 

 clover alone, and alfalfa alone. Because timothy alone in a meadow 

 results from the gradual dying out of clover in the mixture and because 

 clover is rarely planted by itself, the percentages of crop land devoted to 

 a mixed stand of timothy and clover, as shown in figure 1, are taken as 

 a fair index of the distribution of cultivated hay, other than alfalfa, in the 

 counties of the State. The survey itinerary was laid out with these points 

 in mind. The percentage of crop land devoted to hay is somewhat mis- 

 leading in some instances, a marked case being Sullivan County in the 

 Catskill Mountains where the amount of crop land is very limited. 



Method of gathering data in the field 



The following method of taking data finally was adopted. It gives 

 a fairly quantitative measure of the disease and at the same time requires 



