On the stem eelworm, Anguillulina dipsaci, attacking oats, onions, field beans, parsnips, rhubarb, and certain weeds

Abstract

Observations made by various workers over many years have indicated more or less clearly the probability that there is in this country a race of the stem eelworm, Anguillulina dipsaci, capable of attacking oats, field beans, onions, rhubarb, parsnips and certain common weeds. One of the earliest records bearing on this is that provided by Bos (1892) who cited information, supplied to him by Miss Ormerod, which showed that field beans might be seriously attacked by the parasite when grown after oats which had suffered from “tulip-root”. Many years later Johnson (1936a & 1940) reported failure of beans from eelworm attack following “tulip-root” oats in fields in Yorkshire and showed the significance of common chickweed and cleavers as reservoir hosts on which the parasite can live in the absence of susceptible farm crops. In another paper (1936) he showed that A, dipsaci associated with crown-root of rhubarb is interchangeable between rhubarb and oats in both of which it is capable of setting up disease symptoms. In his 1940 paper this investigator showed that A. dipsaci from rhubarb readily infests oats and common chickweed and also transfers to beans and, further, that the parasite from both oats and beans is infective to cleavers and common chickweed and back from both these weeds to oats and beans.