REPUBLICAN POST

October 24, 1912

 

HARMFUL POTATO EEL-WORM

Rejection of Several Carloads of Tubers Cause for Considerable Worry Among Growers

(By S.B. Doten.)

 

            The rejection of several carloads of potatoes on account of the presence of the potato eel-worm is cause for considerable concern among growers in some of the western states.

            The surface of a badly diseased potato is more or less wrinkled and dotted with circular or oval pimples somewhat smaller than a pinhead, or with more irregular and larger nodules.  The nodules are of a grayish or brownish color, more or less depressed in the center, and sometimes surrounded by a slight furrow.

            If a portion of the pulpy center of one of the burrows is scraped out and examined with the microscope, it will be found to contain numerous eggs, larvae, young and adult worms.  The adults are at most one twenty-fifth of an inch long.  The potato cells have broken walls and the starch grains are fewer in number than in healthy tissue and those present are of smaller size.

            The disease is spread by planting infested seed potatoes.  It is not definitely known to what extent the worms may live and multiply in the soil itself or how long a soil may remain infected.  The important point can be settled only by careful observation and experiment.

            Only a few carloads of potatoes were rejected, so that it does not appear that the disease is as yet widespread.  The efforts of some dishonest shippers to dispose of potatoes known to be diseased, either for food or seed, should be guarded against by every grower, shipper and all who deal in potatoes, making themselves familiar with the appearance of the disease, and combining in an honest effort to stamp it out. Some sort of inspection service should be immediately established in the sections where potatoes are grown for shipment purposes.  Care should be exercised in the purchase of seed potatoes, to insure that the disease is not introduced into regions as yet free from it.  It will probably be necessary to quarantine against infected localities, in case the disease becomes widespread.

            How to free infected soil from the parasite is a question which the knowledge at present at our command will not permit us to answer satisfactorily.  The best advice for the present, it seems to us, is to plant infected fields with some other kind of crop, preferably grain or alfalfa rather than a root crop, such as sugar beets, which might be attacked by the same pest.