Asia’s useful trees and plant
K.L. Noatay
Khair is one of the very important plants of the Indian subcontinent. It is a small to medium-sized deciduous tree. Its scientific name is Acacia catechu, and the family is Leguminoseae-mimoseae. A legend has it that the scientists added the specific name ‘catechu” to the common generic name Acacia for two reasons. One, its bristles resemble the claws of animals of the cat family. Two, its heart wood contains cutch. Its Indian vernacular names in different zones are khoira, koir, kheriya baval, kher babul, kagli, cachu, kugli, kaderi, khoiru, sandra, etc.

MCD result of human greed
K.S. Chawla
Imagine the horror which struck Noel Garner, an Irish farmer, when he saw the carcass of one of his cows, which had died of mad cow disease (MCD) and he had buried two days ago, turning up at his doorstep, lodged in an old barrel. His neighbours afraid of the disease particle seeping into their water supply had dug up the carcass with a mechanical digger, shoved it into a barrel and transported it to Garner’s door. The middle of last year saw Europe in the grip of panic epidemic emanating from Paris due to fear of catching the MCD from contaminated beef. The MCD is transmissible to human beings through eating beef of the MCD cows. The human form of the disease known as nv Creutfeldt Jacob disease (nv CJD) and is invariably fatal. It has already killed 83 people in Britain and two in France.

• Farm operations for October

Asia’s useful trees and plant
K.L. Noatay

Khair is one of the very important plants of the Indian subcontinent. It is a small to medium-sized deciduous tree. Its scientific name is Acacia catechu, and the family is Leguminoseae-mimoseae. A legend has it that the scientists added the specific name ‘catechu” to the common generic name Acacia for two reasons. One, its bristles resemble the claws of animals of the cat family. Two, its heart wood contains cutch. Its Indian vernacular names in different zones are khoira, koir, kheriya baval, kher babul, kagli, cachu, kugli, kaderi, khoiru, sandra, etc.

Khair can come up naturally on all kinds of geological formations and soils. However, porus alluvium consisting of sand and shingle suit it more. It grows on granite, gneiss, schist, quartzite, shale, basalt, trap, limestone conglomerate, laterite, etc. and also on black cotton soil.

Khair is found growing naturally all over the Indian subcontinent in certain terrain experiencing neither too much of rains, nor any water bogging, in the whole of the Indo Gangetic planes from Assam westwards, right up to Afghanistan. Also from sea coast to Deccan Plateau and then northwards to the lower Himalayan ranges having an altitude up to about 1250 m or so above mean sea level.

Khair is a slow growing species. It matures in about 50 to 60 years’ time by when it attains a height of about 8 to 12 metres and a bole of diameter about 30 to 40 cm. Khair seldom grows into a straight boled tree. Instead, it generally tends to have a crooked trunk and an irregular shaped crown. Its bark is grey in colour and nearly 8 mm to 12 mm thick. It tends to come off in small patches of irregular shape.

Khair is generally leafless during late spring to early summer. Old leaves are generally shed during January-February and new ones appear during April-May. The species gets full foliage by June-July when it paints the environment and landscape so very beautifully.

The leaves of khair are compound. The rachis branching from the mid-rib has 4 to 5 roundish prickle. The rachis is nearly 10 to 20 cm long and bears 20 to 60 pinnae each about 3 to 4 cm long.

The khair tree flowers during June to October. Its inflorescence is pale yellow to cream coloured. The fruit of khair is pod shaped. It is 5 to 7 cm long and 1 to 1.5 cm wide and shining brown in colour.

The sap wood of khair is large and yellowish white. It weights nearly 20 kg per cubic foot. The heart wood is small and nearly red in colour. It weights nearly 25 to 28 kg per cubic foot. While the sap wood is liable to be attacked by a variety of insects, the heart wood is too hard to be attacked by any of such insects. The wood is full of white substance, called ‘katha” or catechin. This substance is of substantial commercial value. It is obtained by boiling small choppings/chips of the heart wood in specially designed earthen pichers and allowing the concentrate to cool and crystalise. The wood being so hard is used for making rice pisteles, rollers for crushing sugar cane and oilseeds, ploughs, handles for knife and swords, for making quality charcoal which is sought so eagerly by gold, silver and blacksmiths. The wood takes good planning and polishing. Even then it is not much used in house construction work merely because of a superstition against its this use.

The khair tree is very useful in a number of ways. The katha is not only used as a remedy for body pain but also in medicines for other human ailments. Its wood contains catechin, catechutanic acid and tannin. Katha is used in big way in the ‘pan’. It forms an important ingredient of adhesives for plywood and is also extensively used in drying canvas and sizing of fishing nets and ropes. The bark and roots of khair are used in treating sore mouth, body pains, gravel, bronchial asthma and indigestion. The bark is especially useful as astringent, and a cure in cough, diarrhoea and indigestion, cancer, piles, sore throat, ulceration, eczema and certain forms of leprosy.

Keeping in view the several uses of the khair tree, its wood, bark, roots etc. these all are in great demand. While the going price of a standing khair tree of approximately one-foot diameter is about Rs 2000, the katha sells at nearly Rs 600 per kg. The bark fetches nearly Rs 20 per kg. The tree has always been subjected to extensive exploitation — both legal as well as illegal.

Whereas this plant regenerates itself quite abundantly in suitable soil and moisture conditions, the foresters and land owners tend to assist the nature artificially to stock the vacant areas with this species at a quick pace. For that purpose its seeds are collected during December-January and sown in polythene bags during February-March. The transplanting of the seedling is best done during the rainy season. In natural habitat it can be raised easily by direct sowing as well.

MCD result of human greed
K.S. Chawla

Imagine the horror which struck Noel Garner, an Irish farmer, when he saw the carcass of one of his cows, which had died of mad cow disease (MCD) and he had buried two days ago, turning up at his doorstep, lodged in an old barrel. His neighbours afraid of the disease particle seeping into their water supply had dug up the carcass with a mechanical digger, shoved it into a barrel and transported it to Garner’s door. The middle of last year saw Europe in the grip of panic epidemic emanating from Paris due to fear of catching the MCD from contaminated beef. The MCD is transmissible to human beings through eating beef of the MCD cows. The human form of the disease known as nv Creutfeldt Jacob disease (nv CJD) and is invariably fatal. It has already killed 83 people in Britain and two in France.

What is this MCD which is ravaging multi-billion dollar beef industry of Europe and sending shivers down the spine of beef eaters on a mere suspicion of eating contaminated beef. The story is worth telling as it has lessons for all.

According to Dr B.S. Gill, a former Dean, College of Veterinary Science, in April, 1985, a farmer in south of England first noticed one of his cows stumbling, staggering and jerking indicating brain disorder. By November, 66 more similar cases were noticed. Investigations showed that the disease to be a new one given the scientific name bovine spongioform encephalopathy (BSE) as the disease causes sponge-like holes in the substance of brain. From then the number of diseased cattle steadily increased. By November, 1996, the MCD cases were about 1,60,000 in the Great Britain, of which 85 per cent occurred in dairy herds. Nearly 14 per cent Britain dairy herds had reported one or two cases of the MCD amongst them. The disease had been reported from Spain, Oman, and 12 European countries where it was linked to importation of cattle or cattlefeed containing meat and bone meal (MBM) from Britain. Only Austria, Italy, Sweden and Finland have no reported cases.

According to Dr Gill, the MCD is a brain wasting disease. When it was first linked to the human cases in Britain it caused scare to the extent that nearly 10,000 schools stopped serving beef to the students. The scare sent multi-billion pound beef industry of Britain into tailspin as the European Union slapped a ban on the import of British beef and the MBM. The economic distress was so great that the British Government was obliged to negotiate an agreement with the EU in April, 1996, committing itself to the slaughter of 4.7 million cows at the rate of 15,000 cattle a week for six years.

Dr Gill explains that the disease is caused by a small infectious particle called prion which is neither bacterium nor virus, lacking in nucleic acid, resistant to usual laboratory sterilisation procedures — steaming under pressure of 15 minutes, exposure to 2m sodium hydroxide solution for one hour, ultraviolet and formal saline. Prion is a modified form of normal protein (prp) occurring in the membrane of the nervous tissue. How this normal component of the nervous system turns into infectitious and destructive prion is not yet known. One hypothesis is that exposure to organophosphorus compounds which are commonly used to kill agricultural pests at the subtoxic level led to the mutation of Prp gene to form the prion.

Dr Gill laments, thus, the human greed for more profits converted a humble grass eating cows into a carnibalistic milch cow and landed the British cattle industry and the nation’s health in trouble. Recycling of abattoir waste material also recycled the noxous disease causing agent — a new menace in the form of the BSF in cattle and similar disease nv CJD in human linked to the BSE via eating meat of the MCD cows. This is yet another example of disturbing the ecological balance leading to catastrophe. About 99 per cent global load of the BSE occurred in the Great Britain. The USA has been free of the MCD and imposed in 1997 a strict ban on cannibalistic feeding of cattle of ruminants with a view to keeping the disease away from its shores. However, the occurrence of sheep scrapie and a chronic neutral wasting disease in some wild deer and elk has led critics to say that there is the possibility of the existence of a native variety of the MCD in the USA.

According to Dr Gill India has been free from scrapie and the MCD, but this is not the ground for complacency as there is a recent report from London of the withdrawal of polio vaccine suspected to be infected with the MCD. The vaccine was made using serum from British cows in violation of a statutory ban on using cow products in medicine. The importance of iron clad regulatory rules of meat inspection, and cattle washings and importation of animal products cannot be over-emphasised.

Farm operations for October

Sugarcane:
Complete the planting of sugarcane in the first fortnight of this month.