Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting Part 18

DR. CRANE: He is to appoint a committee.

DR. MacDANIELS: Any way he chooses to mark them out.

DR. ANTHONY: He is organizing a nut tester a.s.sociation.

DR. MacDANIELS: No, an evaluation a.s.sociation. As I would say, you have the Ohio a.s.sociation already formed; that would be their problem to come up with an answer for their state. We have the Pennsylvania organization already organized. They will come up with some sort of evaluation: No.

1, Thomas, No. 2, whatever it is, No. 3, whatever it is. Now, in your other states we don't have an organization; do it some other way. I don't care how they do it.

DR. CRANE: There are some others in these other states, too, that are already formed.

Any other discussion?

(Whereupon, a vote on the motion was called for, and it was carried unanimously.)

MR. SILVIS: Just one thing. It was made with the express purpose that we start maybe just the black walnut. At the same time in certain areas you may as well raise a hickory or a Persian right along with the black walnut, or the filbert.

MR. McDANIEL: No objection, but this year we are surveying the black walnut named varieties only.

MR. SALZER: I am just a buck private in the rear rank, but we have been having little local meetings in New York, and they appointed me vice-president for the State of New York, the Empire State, and here Ohio has their organization, Pennsylvania has their organization. What am I going to do? I can work Western New York, but I have got to have someone to help me in Eastern New York.

DR. MacDANIELS: Take the members.h.i.+p list and take the men who can do it.

DR. CRANE: There are a lot of good men in Eastern New York.

Now, if there isn't anything else, I will turn the meeting back to Dr.

MacDaniels.

DR. MacDANIELS: Thank you, Dr. Crane. I think these talks are good for the soul. We can let our hair down and know what we all think. And I do think it's important that we do make some progress on this particular problem. I think this is one way to do it. There may be a half dozen ways and other ways better, but at least you have to agree on something and go on from there.

Now, the meeting in the morning begins at nine o'clock, the full program.

If there is no further business, then, this session is adjourned.

(Whereupon, at 10 o'clock, p.m., the meeting was adjourned, to reconvene at 9 o'clock, a. m. the following day, August 29, 1950.)

TUESDAY MORNING SESSION

August 29, 1950

DR. MacDANIELS: I want to make the remark that this isn't church, you can sit up front if you want to.

The first paper this morning has to do with a nut tree disease that is bothering a good many of us, I think, particularly in Michigan, as you recall from Mr. Becker's paper, the Bunch Disease of Walnuts, by Dr. H.

L. Crane and Dr. J. W. McKay. I don't know which one is going to give it. Dr. McKay?

The Bunch Disease of Walnuts

Discussion

(Ma.n.u.script too late for publication.)

(Drs. Crane and McKay reported that there had been little further development in knowledge regarding the walnut bunch disease since 1948, when G. F. Gravatt and Donald C. Stout of the U.S.D.A. Division of Forest Pathology reported on it with ill.u.s.trations at the N.N.G.A.

meeting (see our report for 1948 pp. 63-66.) Since then the state of California has prohibited the entry of all walnut nursery trees and scions from the Rocky Mountain states or farther east.--Ed.)

DR. CRANE: I'd like to make one additional remark. You see, we call this trouble "bunch disease" rather than "brooming," to distinguish it from other diseases that are caused by known parasites. We have a disease very similar to this one affecting walnuts and pecan and hickory, and that one has been studied more carefully than has the bunch disease. It is unquestionably caused by virus, and in our pecan orchards we have a situation that exists that is a parallel to what it is in the black walnut. The variety Stuart practically never has shown any symptom of the bunch disease. Yet it performs very much like a lot of our black walnuts do. They just don't bear; they don't have the proper foliage; they don't make the proper kind of growth. So we are not sure whether they are symptomless carriers, that is, in terms of the lack of expression of virus growth and this bunchy condition on them.

Really, we feel that all people that are interested in the walnuts and that are trying to grow them should make careful observations on these trees to study just what the situation is, how it develops, and note the performance of these trees that become diseased; because we feel that it's a much more serious thing than people appreciate at the present time.

In much of Eastern Sh.o.r.e Maryland and of the area around Was.h.i.+ngton and Beltsville and over in Virginia, a great majority of the trees are affected by it, particularly j.a.panese walnuts of all types and the b.u.t.ternuts. I feel it is so bad on j.a.panese walnuts and b.u.t.ternuts that they shouldn't be propagated in the area.

MR. McDANIEL: I had the bunch growth developed on a new species this year in my planting in north Alabama, a 12-year-old tree of ~Juglans rupestris~. It is a growth that looks practically the same as the bunch disease on the j.a.panese walnut. I believe that's the first time it's been observed on that species. There are no b.u.t.ternuts or j.a.panese walnuts on the farm. There are dozens of black walnuts (seedlings and several varieties) none of which show the bunch symptoms. However, it is typically developed on some j.a.panese trees a few miles away.

At Whiteville, Tenn., Dr. Aubrey Richards has a suspicious looking tree among some two year old seedlings of ~Juglans major~ from Arizona seeds.

MR. CHASE: I'd like to add to that, too, Mac. In our walnut arboretum we had some ~rupestris~, and I had been suspicious of its being diseased for a number of years. I finally have decided that it had the bunch disease, and those trees down at Norris have all pa.s.sed out.

MR. McDANIEL: My tree came from Norris, 10 years ago.

DR. MacDANIELS: ~Juglans rupestris~ killed by the disease.

MR. STOKE: Just because this is a little contradictory to what you have heard, I want to say that my experience has been this: I have an old nursery--well, there is a b.u.t.ternut in the row and also heartnut--j.a.ps.

One of those j.a.ps has had the bunch disease for six or eight years. None of the others has been affected. It was a variety I wanted to perpetuate. I took an apparently healthy scion from that and put it on another tree, and that grafted tree also had the disease. But there has been no evidence of contagion from this j.a.p to the other j.a.panese, b.u.t.ternuts and black walnut in the same planting in the immediate neighborhood--in fact, they crowd each other. That's a statement of fact.

I spoke a little while ago of an old black walnut tree that had that disease for a number of years and none other in that planting had it.

MR. O'ROURKE: Is there any correlation between the age of the tree and the expression of the disease?

DR. McKAY: It's been our observation that we haven't had it in our nursery to any extent. We have seen it in the nursery of J. Russell Smith on Persian walnut. It, to my knowledge, is the only place where we have seen it on nursery trees. It may be that our nursery happened to be free of the inoculum, because it's been about a mile from the orchards.

MR. O'ROURKE: Would you by any chance think it might be seed borne?

DR. McKAY: We have no information on that virus.

MR. GILBERT SMITH: I have one statement to put in at this time. Dr.

Crane questioned whether the j.a.panese walnut should be grown. I wonder if the j.a.panese walnut might not be a safeguard in the area where they don't have the disease, in that you will detect the disease the quickest on the j.a.panese walnut, and in that way anyone would become wise to it, rather than if it was in the black walnut. It might be so insidious that it could be well spread before persons knew they had it at all. I wonder if the j.a.panese walnut, through its quickness in showing the disease, might not be a safeguard to the other walnuts?

DR. MacDANIELS: That's a technique that's used with some other plants.

MR. CORSAN: I go on the principle that a tree that's well fed might not resist every disease, but it will resist a great many diseases and most of the diseases, if it's well fed. Now, the feeding of trees is very important. I noticed that in going back and forth between Florida and Toronto. I examine the pecan situation every fall and spring, and just to think of Stuarts--you know the size of Stuart pecan--coming in good, big crop of nuts that size (indicating with fingers). Can you see that?

And you know that is less than half the size the Stuart should be. It's a great nut for cracking by machinery. In fact, a lot of people grow nothing but Stuart. And last year they had such a crop. Last year I pointed to a farm right near the highway. "Do you see that? For years I have been trying to get you to put that sawdust, which is nearly 40 feet high in a pile, around your pecans and see the vast difference in your pecans." You know there was no rain down there all last summer, and the pecans were half the proper size. Now, that sawdust would keep the moisture in. I am a great believer in the use of sawdust. It's a tree product itself and it has some of the const.i.tuents of what the pecan should feed on.