TRITICUM SATIVDM. 



5 



watering, and benefit their crops almost as much by loosening the caked surface soil as by 

 removing the weeds, but this is by no means a common practice, and if the land was in 

 clean condition when sown, it is not as a rule weeded. The custom is reported from the 

 Bahraich District, and may prevail in other parts of the Provinces, of topping wheat which 

 shows an undue tendency to run to leaf and stalk, by cutting down the upper portion of 

 the plants with a sickle. This is done when the crop is about 3 feet high, and care is 

 taken not to cut down so low as to damage the ears which have formed in the leaf covers, 

 but not yet emerged. A similar custom obtains in parts of the Punjab where however 

 the young plant is fed down by sheep. 



Harvesting. The crop when ripe is cut by sickles and carried to the threshing floor, where after 



having been allowed to dry for several days it is trodden out by bullocks, and winnowed 

 by the simple expedient of exposing the grain and chaff to the wind by pouring them 

 out of a basket held some 5 feet from the ground. Should there be no wind, an artificial 

 breeze is made by agitating a cloth, but this adds greatly to the expense and trouble, and 

 is in no way an efficient substitute for the English winnower. 



Diseases and injuries. Indian like English wheat suffers from the attacks of microscopic fungi, but not to 



the same extent, owing doubtless to the greater dryness of the climate. 



There is, however, a considerable difference ia this respect between one locality and 

 another. In the Meerut and Eohilkhand Divisions, where winter rains are of regular 

 occurrence and dense mists often prevail in December and January, it would be difficult 

 to find a wheat field in which some plants were not attacked by rust, and occasionally 

 considerable damage is suffered from it, while in the centre and south of the Provinces 

 it often requires a considerable amount of searching in order to discover such specimens. 

 The commonest of the fungous diseases to which wheat is liable is the one known as 

 raltua or girwi, which appears to be identical with the English mildew or rust. The 

 plant tissues become filled with minute orange coloured spores which, when ripe, burst 

 through the plant skin in longitudinal fissures, sprinkling the leaves and ears with a red- 

 dish powder. In this condition it is known to botanists under the generic name of 

 Trichobasis, from the fact that each spore is furnished with a short hair-like profusion 

 or stalk. As the plant ripens clusters of minute bodies appear, each consisting of a 

 stalk fixed in the leaf tissues bearing a double-celled head. These bodies grow out in 

 clusters, each cluster appearing to the naked eye a minute black spot. In this stage the 

 fungus is known as Puccinia, and was long supposed to be a separate plant from the 

 Trichobasis, instead of merely a stage in its history. 



"When ears of wheat are distorted and thickly covered with a dark brown or black 

 dust, the plant is infected with the disease known to English farmers as * smut ' (Ustilago), 

 and to natives as Icandtoa. The dust is composed of very minute globular spores far 

 smaller than those of Trichobasis, but resembling them in being single celled. Rust does 

 not necessarily altogether destroy the produce, although it almost invariably deteriorates 

 it, but nothing survives the attacks of smut. The name kandwa is applied to a totally 

 distinct disease in the case of the millets, when it denotes the fungus, known as " bunt " 

 or " ergot " in England, which fills the grain with a greasy black powder, leaving the 

 plant, and indeed the grain itself, externally perfectly healthy looking. Bunt does not 

 appear to be so common in wheat in this country as in England. 



