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Vegetable Pathologist

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Daniel McAlpine and The Bitter Pit

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Abstract

Following the devastating epidemic of wheat rust in 1889, mounting public concern over losses resulted in loud calls for action. Black stem rust of wheat had been a problem in Australia from soon after settlement in 1788. In spite of information about the cause of wheat stem rust being around for over a century (Ainsworth 1981), there were farmers and politicians who blamed it on unfavourable weather and soil conditions. By then, de Bary’s Morphology and Biology of Fungi (de Bary 1887) was available in English, and the better educated were aware that the rusts were windborne. But they were a minority. One farmer blamed fermentation of the roots, believing the red powder on stems and leaves was merely iron oxide shed from rusty windmills and other sources. Others believed that rust infections occurred in the same way as seedling-infecting bunts and smuts and that seed dressings would control them. In the meantime, between about 1840 and 1860, stem rust pushed wheat-growing inland from the relatively mild moist coastal belt and alluvial river valleys into the drier, hotter interior, quite unsuited to English wheats (Henzell 2007) (Fig. 5.1).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Melbourne, Blackburn, VIC, Australia

    Douglas G. Parbery

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Parbery, D.G. (2015). Vegetable Pathologist. In: Daniel McAlpine and The Bitter Pit. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09552-3_5

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