HEAD SMUT OF SORGHUM AND MAIZE 
By Alden A. Potter, 
Assistant Pathologist , Office of Cereal Investigations, 
Bureau of Plant Industry 
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE DISEASE 
DISTRIBUTION 
In the agriculture of western Kansas and Texas and similar parts of 
the Great Plains area various sorghum varieties have recently attained 
considerable importance as a dry-land crop in the farming operations 
which are developing in the sections formerly devoted to cattle ranges. 
This fact, together with the importance of broom corn in some sections, 
has led to an investigation of the diseases of the sorghum crop by the 
Office of Cereal Investigations of the Bureau of Plant Industry. 
The study of the head smut has an added importance from the fact 
that it occurs on maize (Indian corn) and has been reported by McAlpine 
(1910, p. 290) 1 as serious on that crop in Australia, and by Evans (1911) 
and Mundy (1910, p. 1) in South Africa (PI. XXXI). It has been 
found on maize in some abundance in this country (Norton, 1895; Hitch¬ 
cock and Norton, 1896, p. 198), although the writer, in rather extensive 
observations, has never seen such a case; nor has it been recently reported. 
The parasite is widely distributed in sorghum-growing regions through¬ 
out the world, and in some sections, chiefly tropical or subtropical, it is 
very destructive. Munerati (1910, p. 718) has found it abundant on 
Sorghum halepensis, and it has also been reported from Italy by Passerini 
(1877, p. 236), Mottareale (1903, p. 3), and Cugini (1891, p. 83); from 
India by Cooke (1876, p. 115) and Barber (1904); from Egypt by Kuhn 
(1878, p. 10); from German East Africa by Busse (1904, p. 378); and 
from Japan by Hori (1907, p. 163). According to Hennings (1896, p. 
119), it occurs in North and East Africa, Madagascar, and East India, 
as well as in Central and South Europe. While it has been reported from 
Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey, 
Ohio, and Texas, according to Clinton (1904, p. 393), it is fortunately 
still quite rare in this country. Clinton states that it was probably in¬ 
troduced into the United States with importations of sorghum seed from 
Europe. This seems quite possible in considering Kellerman and Swin¬ 
gle’s (1890, p. 159) original note on its occurrence in this country, where 
it is noted that it first occurred in New Jersey on Amber sorgo (sweet 
sorghum). In Kansas it was first noticed on “Red Liberian” (sumac) 
1 Citations to literature in parentheses refer to "literature cited,” p. 369-371. 
Journal of Agricultural Research, 
Dept, of Agriculture, Washington, D. C. 
(339) 
Vol. II, No. s 
Aug. 15, 1914 
G—29 
