OCR Text |
Show Drouth Proves Value of New Milo Variety Plant breeders who are trying to develop disease-resistant strains of milo had an unusual experience in connection with the drouth at the dry-land experiment station which the United States Department of Agriculture maintains near Dalhart in the Texas Panhandle. The bureau bu-reau of plant industry has at the Dalhart station fields that have been cropped continuously to milo in order to keep up a maximum infection in-fection with the soil-borne milo disease. dis-ease. This enables them to plant new varieties of milo and subject them Immediately to as severe a test as any milo would ever meet. For several years the infection has killed most of the plants while they were young. This year the milo breeders planted a resistant strain developed at the Garden City (Kan.) sub-station which lived In spite of the disease in the soil. All around this field, crops were severely severe-ly injured by drouth, but this milo remained green and vigorous. The scientists account for this in two ways: The variety Is evidently resistant re-sistant to the disease under the most severe drouth. So few plants were able to survive on these plots in previous years that they did not exhaust ex-haust the moisture, and plants on these plols are now using this accumulated ac-cumulated moisture. |