Word: fungi
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Sweet potato stems and leaves, reported Department of Agriculture researchers at Beltsville, Md., also produced two antibiotics. One worked against Staphylococcus aureus, the germ that causes boils; the other against fungi that damage plants. In the skins and pulps of ripe bananas, there were two more: one worked against Tinea trychophytina, the fungus that causes athlete's foot, the other against the fungus that makes tomato plants wilt...
Scientists often reach worthwhile goals by setting off in the wrong direction. Dr. Alma J. Whiffen of the Upjohn Co. did just that, several years ago. She noticed that Streptomyces griseus, the mold that produces bacteria-killing streptomycin, also produces a substance that is deadly to fungi. She separated it from the "beers" (solution in which the mold had been growing), called it "actidione," and tried it on fungi that cause human diseases...
...greenhouse near the slain seedlings were some grown-up bean plants badly infected with powdery mildew. Remembering that actidione was supposed to kill fungi (including mildews), the Michigan scientists sprayed them with a weak solution. In 48 hours the mildew disappeared. They made the solution still weaker and tried it on other afflicted beans. It worked like a charm in dilutions as great as one part per million (1 oz. to 7,497 gals. of water...
...under greenhouse conditions. But agricultural scientists are excitedly testing it on other plants infected with a long list of other fungus diseases. If actidione kills the smuts, blights, rusts and wilts of the major farm crops, it will have a tremendous effect on the world's food supply: fungi probably steal as much food from man as all the world's insects...
...head of the Herbarium, which houses the University's large fungi collection, White will hold the rank of associate professor of Botany. The new director is now head of the Myscological Laboratory of the Army Quartermasters' Depot in Philadelphia...