Abstract
THERE has been hitherto one “missing link” in our knowledge of the life-history of the potato-blight, Peronospora infestans. The non-sexual mode of reproduction by conidia or zoospores has long been known; but the sexual mode of reproduction has eluded observation. This link has now been supplied through the researches of Mr. Worthington Smith, who described his discovery in a paper read at the last meeting of the Scientific Committee of the Royal Horticultural Society, and published at length in the Gardener's Chronicle for July 10. He finds the female organs, the “resting-spores” or unfertilised “oospores,” and the male organs or “antheridia,” in the interior of the tissue of the tuber, stem, and leaf, when in a very advanced stage of decay; and he has actually observed the contact between the two organs in which the process of fecundation consists. In some remarks made at the meeting of the British Association last year by one of our high authorities, it was suggested that we have in the Peronospora an instance of the phenomenon not infrequent among fungi, known as “alternation of generations;” and that the germination of the true spores of the potato-blight must be looked for on some other plant than the potato. Mr. Worthington Smith, has, however, looked nearer home, and has proved that the suggestion is not at all events verified in all cases. It is matter of congratulation that, after the lapse of a period of nearly thirty years since the publication of the first important memoir on the subject, this discovery—important alike from a scientific and a practical point of view—has fallen to one of our own countrymen, notwithstanding the foreign aid invoked by the Royal Agricultural Society in settling the still unsolved problems connected with this perplexing pest.
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New Discovery in Connection with the Potato Disease . Nature 12, 214 (1875). https://doi.org/10.1038/012214a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/012214a0