Evening star., 1939-01-01
Way Of Resurreeting
Plant Specimens
Told 10 Scientists
Dr.. SwineIe Says Method
May Sove Millions
For U. S. Formers
BY q Staff Correspondent of The Star.

9! otaH correspondent OF The Star.
RICHMOND, Va, Dec. 31.-A way
OF resurrecting specimens of plants
gathered as much as two centuries
ago, which may save millions for
American farmers, was described
to botanists of the American AS
sociation for the Advancement of
Science here today by DR.. Walter
t. SWlngle of the Department of
Agriculture.
This technique consists in soak
Ing the old, dried flower in hot
water and dilute solution of
ammonia which results in restoring
the plant protoplasm to a condi-
tion very similar to that of the
living plant. This can then be
fixed by chemical process and the
plant preserved either as a whole
or cut into thousands of cross Sec
tions so that every part of it can
be studied in minute detail.
The actual method, DR.. Swingle
said, was first proposed about 20
years ago by professor at the
University of Upsala in Sweden and
now is being applied in the De-
partment of Agriculture laboratories
in Washington.
Newer Aspects of Breeding.
Its great value, he explained,
comes from newer aspects of plant
breeding work in which remote
relationships between various plants
must be determined in working out
disease resistant strains. In the
plant collections of the world, he
said, there are now approximately
100000 different species, most of
them dried and distorted so that
1T is impossible to determine blood
relationships. Hitherto the depart
ment has sent plant explorers all
over the earth to gather wild rela-
tives of the various agricultural
plants. This has been largely hit
or-mlsS procedure. Henceforth it
will be possible to do large part
of this "eXploring' without moving
from the laboratory so that when
the field explorer leaves he will
be looking for seeds or cuttings of
oSiAAAAeS opSS4So hIlOWll W
exist. The most valuable of them
superficially may now have the re-
motest resemblance to the plants
actually used in agriculture.
Saved Farmers S1OO,OOO,0 900.
A striking example cited by DR..
SWingle was that of plant explorer
who purchased package of melon
seeds for a penny in bazaar in
Northern India few years ago.
When these seeds were planted in
Department of Agriculture expert
ment station the plants turned out
to be the worst cultivated melons
known. They were bitter, stringy,
and rotted in three days.
Yet that penny investment saved
American farmers at least $1o0,O00,-
600 in the last 10 years. Just at the
time they were introduced a plant
disease had broken out which
threatened to wreck the whole
American melon industry Nothing
was said about it in public, but
melon growers with heavy invest
ments were desperate OF all the
species of this plant known the
bitter, easily rotting one from the
foothills of the HimaIayas alone
was found to possess resistance to
the disease. Hybridizations were
performed which brought its rust
resistant blood" into the choicest
varieties of American melons with
out injuring their quality and the
greater part of the spores of the
fungi causing the disease perished
of starvation.
Still, DR.. Swingle said, the malady
hasn't been eliminated. A few
hardy spores survived. They have
gained strength with the years until
now they are about ready to cause
serious economic loss again.
Origin Is Unknown.
Department of Agriculture botan-
lists have not at present the remotest
idea of what the penny package of
seeds bought at the Hindo bazaar
represented, or even where they
came from. The melons were not
the characteristic ones of that part
of the world 1t is probable, DR..
Swingle says, that there is in them
cross with some wild relative of
the melon which may not have the
slightest superficial resemblance to
1t. Hitherto, it would have been
necessary to have sent an explorer
on a hit-or-miss quest with only
vague ideas of what to look for. Now
1t may be possible to find the exact
plant and where it grows from ap-
plication of the new resurrection
method to melon specimens scat
tered through the dried collections
of the world.
A similar sort of accident, he
pointed out, saved the American
cane sugar industry, threatened with
destruction by virus disease a few
years ago. At present, Dr.. SWingle
said, there is hardly a stalk of actual
cane sugar growing in the world,
other than as botanical curiosity.
All the cane grown commercially is
q cross between the old variety and
a related kind of wild grass, which
has almost no sugar in its juices.
Here the genetic line is we'll estab- |
lished-unlike the melon with the
unknown wild ancestor upon the
finding of which may depend wheth-
er there are canteloupes on Ameri-
can breakfast tables 20 years hence.
Unknown Genus of Citrus.
Already, DR.. Swingle said, he has
been able to find by this method
hitherto unknown genus of citrus
fruit from the remote island of New
ireland in the New Hebrides. There
was only single specimen of it in
the world, gathered by a Catholic
missionary and deposited in Eu-
ropean herbarium DR.. Swingle OBJ
tanned this specimen and subjected
it to the resurrection process The
missionary had thought that it was
identical with species of lime grow
ing in the West Indies and had COL
lected it only because it was grow