Hang on a Zeck, Senior
From the September 2006 edition of Agriculture Today.
A major exhibition of scientific illustrations of agricultural pest insects, mites and plant pathogens featured in National Science Week celebrations during August in Sydney.
The Natura Morta collection comprises artwork by EH (Emil) Zeck and Margaret Senior, who worked for the former NSW Department of Agriculture.
The illustrations are owned by the NSW Agricultural Scientific Collections Trust, which manages Australia’s largest and most comprehensive agricultural insect, mite and plant pathogen collection.
Dr Murray Fletcher, scientific collections research leader, said the exhibition contained 42 illustrations, six of them from a series completed by Zeck for the better farming train which toured NSW in 1928 and 1929.
“His illustrations were designed to show farmers in close-up detail how they could identify agricultural pests.”
Zeck’s work, like that of Senior, was reproduced for many years in the NSW Agricultural Gazette.
Margaret Senior was a noted natural history artist and produced more than 70 superb illustrations of plant pathogens.
Dr Fletcher said the signature image for the exhibition was the codling moth – and the story of how we now control it illustrated some of the changes that have been made in pest management.
Zeck painted the codling moth with details about the appropriate time to spray apple trees for effective control of the pest.
“Clever science has since developed an attractant, based on the insects’ own pheromones, which disrupts their mating and stops the females from laying viable eggs.
“As a result pesticide use in orchards has been greatly reduced – to the benefit of growers, consumers and the environment.”
Dr Michael Priest, senior plant pathologist and Curator of the Collection’s Herbarium, said Senior’s illustrations included many diseases that would be familiar to growers and consumers.
They include blossom-end rot of tomatoes, brown rot of stone fruit, peach leaf curl and stem rust of wheat.
The exhibition was one of the events in the inaugural Ultimo Science Festival.
Contact Dr Murray Fletcher or Dr Michael Priest, Orange, (02) 6391 3943 or 6391 3985.
