Reporter and farmer. [volume] (Webster, Day County, Dakota [S.D.]) 188?-1946, 1904-09-15
WHEAT RUST.

'N CONh
neighboring states. The season,
which opened very favorable for the
growth of wheat and other small
grains, promising fair returns, ended
disastrously through the ravages of
the rust. Everyone should be inter
ested directly or indirectly in any
subject concerning the production
and manufacture of wheat, a staple
product. The inquiries which have
come to the Experiment Station ON
corning the many phases of the rust
problem show this to be true. The
newspapers and agricultural papers
have published varied accounts of
the rust, some of which have been
wholly or in part correct, while
others have been absolutely false.
Many facts in regard to the life his
tory of rusts in general are well
known to scientists. Many others
are, however, doubtfully understood
and these promblems still remain to
be solved. The object of this bulle-
tin is not to present any absolutely
new facts to the public, but to pre-
sent in brief those facts which have
been known for some time, and
others which have been secured by
Investigators during the past few
years of research.
The one question which must be
cleared up in the minds of everyone
is that rusts, smuts, mildews, and,
in fact, nearly all plant diseases, are
caused by small parasitic plants liv-
ing dependent upon other plants for
their existence. The powdery mil
dews perhaps exhibit this dependence
of n plant upon another more
clearly than rusts or smuts. In the
powdery mildews, an example of
which is the very common mildew
occurring upon the cultivated lilac,
the parasite lives upon the surface
of the leaves and stems and other
parts of the plant. A near examin-
alton of the area whitened by the
mildew shows that it consists of a
network of very fine threads attached
to the surface of the host plant.
This network of threads is the plant
body of the mildew and feeds upon
the host plant, which is the lilac in
this case, by means of small sucker
like organs which project into the
leaf or plant and extract the sap.
Late in the season black bodies
usually appear upon this white mass
of thread. These bodies contain
several smaller bodies, which serve
to reproduce the plant. These
reproductive bodies are called spores.
The smuts and rusts are plants
similar to the mildews, but develop
their mass Of threads, forming their
plant body inside of the host plant
instead of upon the surface as in
the case with the mildews. The
spores of some smuts, such as wheat
smut, terminate upon the grain of
wheat, and the threads which result
from this termination penetrate
the young wheat plant and live
within the tissues of the wheat plant
throughout its period of growth.
when the grains begin to fill out, the
smut plant, living as a mass of
threads within the wheat plant,
forms it's spores within the wheat
gain. This grain, filed with black
spores, is a well known object to
wheat growers, and is the main
evidence that smut is present in the
wheat.
With rusts the life histories are
very much more complicated. There
are many species of rust growing
upon all of our cultivated grains,
grasses and many Of our weeds,
trees and other cultivated plants.
They are ordinarily called rusts
because certain stages resemble the
color the rust Of iron. This is as
far Is theyssare connected in any way
with the rusts Of metal. The trusts
Of wheat are those in which the
Rrestest interest i taken at present,