Abstract
From the view point of phytopathological anatomy, the author has tried to study the effect of the shoot cluster disease virus on the internal structure of vascular tissues of chinese date tree (Ziziphus jujuba var. inermis Rehd.) comparing healthy checks and diseased plants. The materials were collected at the several sites, Kumgock-Ri, Masuc-Ri, Kyungi-Do, and near the campus of Korea University and around the area of Chongam-Dong, Seoul City, from August 15th to September 5th 1959. The leaf materials of healthy and diseased plants are fixed and aspirated in two kinds of killing solutions, formalin-acetic acid alcohol solution and Craf III solution. Sections were cut at 5-10$\mu$ thickness and stained with the double staining reagents of safranin and fast green. In this experiment the author has observed that there are marked structural changes in the infected plants in contrast of healthy checks. As figures 3-7 show that the following characteric changes have taken place on infected plants: 1) the arrangement of irregularly developed sieve elements in phloem, 2) the degeneration of phloem elements, 3) the irregular arrangement of epidermis in mid-vein, 4) more necrosis is observed among the parenchymatous cells, 5) abundant accumulatin of starch grains in parenchymatous cells, . In contrast to the above irregularities caused by the virus disease, the healthy checks appear normal structures as shown in figures 1 and 2. In adding to the all features noted above, the author could also observe an interesting feature that the xylem elements in mid-vein vascular bundle tissues are considerably disorganized to show the unspecialized vessel elements, the irregularly arranged xylem elements. However, this kind of irregularities which occur in xylem under the virus infection has not been reported previously. The features noted on the internal structure of vascular bundle under the condition of infection by the shoot cluster disease on chinese date trees appear to be more or less closely similar to the symptoms of the bunchy-top of banana and the yellow dwarf disease of barley in respect to the fact that whether phloem necrosis takes place as a primary symptom or a secondary symptom. In all these disease, primary histological changes of hypoplasia and hypertrophy are preceeded by the necrosis of phloem.