Crop Improvement by Utilizing Wild Species. IIT 



This list might be considerably prolonged, but it is unnecessary. 

 It is not my purpose to enumerate all the cultivated varieties which 

 have been derived from wild species within so short a time that we are 

 still familiar with the process. These that I have cited will serve to- 

 emphasize by contention that cultivated varieties have been derived 

 from wild species, and that this is a comparatively easy process. I hold 

 that it is possible to derive many more varieties than we now have frora 

 wild species, and that we may greatly enrich and enlarge our list of 

 farm and garden crops by bringing under cultivation still more wild 

 species. In the following paragraphs I have attempted to make some 

 suggestions as to a few wild species selected from a long list, that 1 

 think are more or less promising. I may venture the hope that one or 

 more of you may have the inclination as well as the time and means for 

 undertaking the improvement of some of these wild species. 



Of the ordinary cereals, Wheat, Oats, Rye, Barley and Maize, 

 there are some wild relatives that in my opinion are likely to repay 

 attempts at cultivation. 



WILD WHEAT. 



While we have no wild species of the wheat proper (Triticum) in 

 North America, we have many species of the closely allied genus 

 Agropyrum, the so-called "Wild Wheat Grasses," at least one species 

 of which is a promising subject for the experimental plant breeder. I 

 refer to the commond Wild Wheat Grass of the Great Plains (Agro- 

 pyrum occidentale), a perennial, erect grass, attaining a height of two 

 to three feet, and terminating in a loose head five to six inches long, 

 composed of numerous, many-flowered spikelets. The grain is long and 

 narrow and, like that of wheat, is hairy at the apex, and grooved on the 

 upper side. Altogether this Wild Wheat Grass already shows many ^'e- 

 semblances to ordinary wheat, and the differences are such as it '*•? 

 reasonable to hope may disappear under cultivation and selection, ^n 

 fact, when one compares this American Wild Wheat, with its strong, 

 erect stem, its long head, and its many-flowered spikelets, with the 

 weak stemmed, small-headed and few-flowered Aegilops ovata of 

 Europe, one is compelled to say that the American plant is by far the 

 more promising. If our plant had had but a fraction of the careful 

 cultivation and selection which have been given to the European 

 species, I am confident that it would have yielded a much more pro- 

 ductive cereal than we have in our present varieties of wheat. More- 

 over, since the American plant is a long-lived perennial, it is possible 

 that from it we may yet obtain a perennial cereal. 



