Proceedings of the International Symposium on Manganese in Soils and Plants held at the Waite Agricultural Research Institute, The University of Adelaide, Glen Osmond, South Australia, August 22-26, 1988, as an Australian Bicentennial Event

Sixty years ago at the Waite Agricultural Research Institute, G. Samuel, a plant pathologist, and C. S. Piper, a chemist, published their conclusion that the cause of roadside take-all, a disease of oats, was manganese deficiency. This report, together with the concurrent and independent studies of W. M. Carne in Western Australia were the first records of manganese deficiency in Australia and came only six years after McHargue's paper which is generally accepted as the final proof of the essentiality of this element. There must have been a few doubts for some people at the time, however, as...