PAPAVER
somniferum.
CULTIVATION
in the
Central
Provinces.
52
Extracted from the Dictionary of
DISEASES.
Root-canker.
Sun-burning.
Diseases of the Poppy Plant.
field is also sown a little garlic or patches of barley. There are about
2,500 acres under opium cultivation, yielding an average of 180 maunds of
chik annually.
"The chief inducement to grow opium is that it requires so much less
labour than sugarcane, and being only four months in the ground requires
but comparatively little water, and many streams which run quite dry
during the hot weather are available for the irrigation of it, ripening as it
does by the end of February." ( Report on the Land Revenue Settlement
of the Baitool District, Nerbudda Division, Central Provinces, by
W. Ramsay, pp. 68-70).
DISEASES OF THE POPPY PLANT.
The late Mr. Scott gave this subject much patient study, and the able
chapter which he devoted to it in his Opium Husbandry should be con
-sulted by all interested in the matter. It is impossible to devote to the
diseases of the poppy the space in this work which its importance demands.
It may be said at the outset that the life-history of the most injurious para
-sitic fungus has not apparently been as yet worked out to its final issue.
Mr. Scott presumed that the recuperative germs that carry on the growth
exist in the seed and is thus sown with the crop instead of coming to it
from some other plant. On this supposition he explained the observation
that seeds saturated in camphorated water were less attacked owing, as
he thought, to the germs of the fungus having been killed. The writer has
alluded to this subject above in the paragraph devoted to the manurial
materials employed in steeping the seeds.
Scott discusses the diseases of the poppy under the following headings :
(I) Specific diseases of a functional or organic nature, caused by an
excess or deficiency of those agents which are necessary for the vigorous
growth of plant, such as soil, light, heat, and moisture ; (2 ) I n j u r i e s
caused by parasitic plants (a) of the higher or flowering plants, e.g., the
broom-rapes and (b) of the lower or so-called flowerless class, limited to
the natural order of Fungi ; (3) Mechanical injuries of various kinds,
chiefly the attacks of insects.
Ist, Specific Diseases.—Mr. Scott describes under this heading the
following :—
(a) Root-canker. —In stiff clayey soils, in which there is an excess of the
oxides of iron or manganese, the poppy is frequently seriously affected
with the above disease. It also prevails even on the lighter class of soils
when there is an excess of alkaline salts. Plants subject to this disease have
the root variously affected ; very frequently it breaks out in isolated patches,
or again it extends less or more over the whole tap-root from the point
upwards. The following, Mr. Scott says, are the more characteristic symp
-toms :—The leaves gradually wether from below upwards, and individually
from the apex and circumference to the base, the central parts thus be
-ing fresh and green, while the margins are quite withered. All ultimately
assume a pale-brownish yellow with veins of a deeper colour, while the
lower surface is generally less or more freely speckled with black resiny
exudations.
A second form of root disease is also mentioned by Mr. Scott, in which
the root is ringed immediately below the soil. The softer outer tissues
are abruptly corroded and this not unfrequently to the central woody
cord. The cause of this ringing, he adds, appears due in many cases to
abrasion of the softer outer tissues in a dry and baked soil. This may be
a result either of an unnatural shrinking of the soil or to the irrigation of
the crop in windy weather.
(b) Sun-burning.— This is the moorka or jookka of the cultivators (the
assamees as they are called), which occurs on light sandy soils in hot sea-