Stem rust of wheat in colonial Australia and the development of the plant pathology profession

Malcolm J. Ryley; Robert F. Park

doi:10.1071/HR23005

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

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Stem rust of wheat in colonial Australia and the development of the plant pathology profession

Malcolm J. Ryley

^A ^* and Robert F. Park ^B

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A Centre for Crop Health, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Qld, Australia.

^B Faculty of Science, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia.

^* Correspondence to: cropdocs61@gmail.com

Historical Records of Australian Science 35(2) 83-97 https://doi.org/10.1071/HR23005

Published online: 23 November 2023

© 2024 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of the Australian Academy of Science. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

Grain production in the early years of the British colonisation of Australia was characterised by a lack of expertise of farmers, a paucity of farm animals and equipment and the poor work ethics of convicts. In 1803, just when wheat production was increasing and becoming less risky, stem rust of wheat caused by the fungus Puccinia graminis f.sp. tritici was discovered by an exiled Irish rebel Joseph Holt, on Captain William Cox’s Brush Farm. Stem rust became an intermittent and often serious disease culminating in a series of epidemics in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Growing varieties less prone to rust was a key recommendation from a series of rust-in-wheat conferences held from 1891 to 1896. It was William Farrer who was the first in Australia to develop new wheat varieties that resisted the ravages of rust principally by maturing earlier. The rust outbreaks were also catalysts for the New South Wales and Victorian governments to employ Australia’s first plant pathologists, Nathan Cobb and Daniel McAlpine, respectively. A year later, Henry Tryon was employed by the Queensland government as its first vegetable pathologist, although he had conducted plant disease investigations as early as 1889.

Keywords: Brush Farm, Daniel McAlpine, Henry Tryon, Joseph Holt, Nathan Cobb, Puccinia graminis f.sp. tritici, stem rust, William Cox, William Farrer.

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