Important: Safety Warning
This page recommends pest-control substances such as arsenic compounds, strychnine, or cyanide — in some cases applied to food crops. These substances are lethal to humans and animals, and their use is now banned or strictly controlled.
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Tilletia
(named in honour of Matthieu Tillet, a French botanist of the eighteenth century). A genus of Fungi, parasitic on grasses. The most conspicuous species (T. Caries=T. Tritici) is found in the ovaries or immature fruits of the various kinds of Wheat, which it fills with a mass of dark brown spores. Externally, the grains look quite healthy, or may be distinguished from the ripe fruits only by their dull green colour; but their whole interior is occupied by the spores of the Fungus, and, on being crushed, they are found to be greasy to the touch, and to emit a disagreeable smell. Under the microscope, the spores are seen to be globular, with a network of ridges over the surface. The diseased condition of the Wheat is known to farmers by the names "Bunt," "Stinking Rust," "Stinking Smut," or "Pepper-brand." On germinating, each spore emits a thread of mycelium, which bears on its tip a circle of slender conidia, united in pairs by cross-branches. The conidia fall,-and produce mycelium, on which grow other conidia, from which mycelium is emitted; and on this the spores are formed. Several other species of Tilletia grow in the ovaries of grasses, e.g., T. Lolii in Lolium remotum, T. Secalis in Rye (Secale cereale), &c.; while others form dark brown streaks in the leaves of several grasses; T. striaeformis is the commonest of the latter species. It has been asserted, but not confirmed, that the use of bunted meal causes disease.
Treatment. The infected grain may be steeped in solutions, e.g., of 1 per cent. of carbolic acid in water, or of potassium permanganate, or of sodium sulphate; in the latter case, it should then be dusted with quicklime, and allowed to dry.