Secondary Schools in the New Zealand Social Order, 1840-1903

<p>The New Zealand pioneer, like the North American frontiersman, has become to many New Zealanders a romanticized symbol rather than a real person struggling to adapt to a strange and often frightening environment. 'As ye sow so shall ye reap' was for the pioneer farmer an injunction to be taken literally. After exhausting his resources in buying his small-holding the pioneer farmer 'would start on foot and alone...with a heavy swag of tools etc, on his back, to which, on passing the last older settler, would be added the additional burden of a kit of seed potatoes and some rations. With these he would camp down on his future lowly home and would work hard, for long hours on very scanty fare...to hurry in a patch of potatoes, and to make a pig-proof fence round it. He would then beat a retreat to the more settled districts, where he would seek employment until his little crop of potatoes was grown when he would return with a heavier load of rations...and this time he would be able to put in a larger crop and to build a whare, so that the next season he might have the joy of conveying his family to the scene of their future expectations. But it was hand work, and there were many privations to undergo for the first few years....'</p>

Secondary Schools in the New Zealand Social Order, 1840-1903

<p>The New Zealand pioneer, like the North American frontiersman, has become to many New Zealanders a romanticized symbol rather than a real person struggling to adapt to a strange and often frightening environment. 'As ye sow so shall ye reap' was for the pioneer farmer an injunction to be taken literally. After exhausting his resources in buying his small-holding the pioneer farmer 'would start on foot and alone...with a heavy swag of tools etc, on his back, to which, on passing the last older settler, would be added the additional burden of a kit of seed potatoes and some rations. With these he would camp down on his future lowly home and would work hard, for long hours on very scanty fare...to hurry in a patch of potatoes, and to make a pig-proof fence round it. He would then beat a retreat to the more settled districts, where he would seek employment until his little crop of potatoes was grown when he would return with a heavier load of rations...and this time he would be able to put in a larger crop and to build a whare, so that the next season he might have the joy of conveying his family to the scene of their future expectations. But it was hand work, and there were many privations to undergo for the first few years....'</p>

Determining the Spatial Pattern of Blackleg Diseased Potato Plants in the Field and Simulated Post-Harvest Tuber Infections in Potato Crates

Experiments were carried out in 2012 and 2013 to answer two basic questions in the testing of potato blackleg causing agents before and after harvest. Firstly, what is the spatial distribution of symptomatic plants in the field. Secondly, what is the distribution of infected tubers over the crates and the resulting detection probability using the standard method of collecting 200 tubers from the top crates in storage. In both years, ten farmers were equipped with a global positioning system (Garmin GPSMAP 62) and asked to register the position of blackleg diseased plants every time they scouted their potato lot for diseases. To answer the second question, potatoes marked with four nails (only visible internally after harvest) and potatoes with a different skin colour were added to one-hectare (ha) fields of seed potatoes in different patterns of aggregation ranging from random, to aggregated distribution, up to one big hotspot prior to harvest. The invisibly marked tubers were used for the unbiased collection of twenty 200-tuber samples from the storage crates, while the coloured skin tubers were used to ascertain, when the potatoes were graded, the distribution of ‘infected’ potatoes over the storage crates. The experiment was carried out with 0.05 and 0.1% disease incidence, in 2012 and 2013, respectively. Twenty two out of 26 fields proved to have a random pattern of diseased plants at harvest, which indicates that the blackleg diseased plants came into the field as infected seed potatoes. Two of the four aggregated patterns detected, started out as random distributions but became aggregated later in time, indicating spread in the field. A random spatial pattern in the field at harvest proved to result in a uniform distribution of infected tubers in the crates and, consequently, sampling of only the top crates for the 200-tuber sample does not introduce any bias. Fifty percent of the infected farmer lots were detected by the Nederlandse Algemene Keuringsdienst inspectors performing their official field surveys, which was a better performance than the 18% detection obtained by the standard 200-tuber sampling method. Only 6 out of 80 samples from the ‘infected’ lots with 0.05% disease incidence level, and 22 out of 80 samples at the 0.1% disease incidence level were detected by the latter method. It was concluded that intensifying the field survey would be cheaper and more successful than enlarging the tuber sample size to increase the probability for detection of infected seed lots.

Productivity and viral diseases of seed potatoes depending on the period of potato desiccation

The aim of the research was to determine the crop productivity, yield of tubers of seed fraction and infection of basic potato seeds with viral infection depending on the period of potato desiccation, application of mineral oil Sunspray, the number and species of winged aphids in the Polissia region of Ukraine. The study was conducted in the prebasic seed production nursery garden of the Institute for Potato Research, NAAS under the conditions of spatial isolation from the main sources and vectors of viral infections of potatoes, located in Nemishaieve, Borodiаnka distr., Kyiv region in the southern part of the Polissia region of Ukraine. The subject of the research is pre-basic and basic seed material of potatoes of mid ripening varieties Myroslava, Predslava, Alians. On average for 2018-2020 years of studies, the highest seed yield was obtained by potato desiccation 10 days after flowering of potatoes - 82.4-85.3 %. However, the level of total and seed yields was low. The efficiency of seed potato production increased with the haulm removal after 20 days - with the total yield depending on the variety 20.6-30.0 t/ha, the yield of seed tubers was in the range of 20.6-22.9 t/ha with the seed content in the crop structure - 71.0-76.3 %. Late haulm removal – on 30th and 40th days after potatoes flowering caused an increase in the yield of tubers of non-standard fraction, with desiccation on 30th day, the seed content in the crop decreased by 61.1-66.0 %, and with desiccation on 40th – by 54-59.8 %. Thus, during the early haulm removal, part of the crop was lost, which during haulm removal in the late stages consisted of large tubers. It has been found out, that potato plants, where the haulm removal during 2018, 2019 was carried out within 10 days after flowering, which was 4.0 % (9.0 % for the check) for the Myroslav potato variety, 3.0 % (10.0 % for the check) for the Predslava potato variety and 4.0 % (9.0 % for the check) for the Alians potato variety were the least infected with PVM. The level of PVM infection when removing the haulm on the 10th day after flowering with the application of Sunspray mineral oil at a rate of 6.0 l/ha decreased on average for the three varieties by 1.5–2.5 %. The best option to preserve the quality characteristics of seed potatoes was to desiccate the potato haulm on 20th day after flowering of potato varieties Myroslava, Predslava and Alians and the application of mineral oil Sunspray - 6.0 l / ha. The yield was 28.8-30.0 t/ha, seed fraction 20.6-22.9, seed yield - 71.0-76.3 %, viral PVM infection was 2.0 3.0 %