Rust-resistant wheats for India

Abstract

All the three rusts of wheat occur in India. It has been shown that in the plains of India the severe summer heat kills the rust spores and that the wheat crop is infected anew each season by spores blown down from the hills, where wheat is cultivated up to an altitude of about 9,000 ft. above sea-level. The barberry, though common in the hills, seems to play little part in the annual recurrence of black rust, and it is the self-sown wheat plants and ratoon tillers from harvested plants in the hilly areas which constitute the most obvious means of carry-over of rusts from year to year.