EFPORTS TO INCREASE FOOD RESOURCES 



was also trying for Kansas wheat, but number P 762 again 

 lived through the winter and yielded well, and this time 

 there was enough grain to send a small portion over to the 

 milling and baking department. Soon the official report 

 came back: "P 762 shows a distinctly higher protein 

 content both in the wheat and in the flour, a higher 

 percentage of flour than Kharkof but somewhat less than 

 Turkey, a loaf expansion practically equal to Kharkof and 

 slightly greater than Turkey, color of loaf equal to or 

 greater than either of the standard varieties, and texture 

 of loaf equal or superior to either of the other varieties." 



In 1914, P 762 was given the name Kanred and distributed 

 to farmers in the hard winter wheat sections for trial. 

 Careful tests on the various sub-stations and on cooperative 

 farms had shown that Kanred ripened earlier, was freer 

 from stem rust, and markedly more winter hardy than the 

 wheats commonly grown. In sixty-six tests Kanred yielded 

 an average of 3.7 bushels more per acre than Turkey, the 

 wheat most generally grown. 



Ten years after it was first introduced, Kanred was 

 grown in twenty states, on four million acres, and com- 

 prised 21 per cent of the hard, red winter wheat grown 

 in the United States — all from a single kernel planted in 

 1905 in the wheat nursery of the Kansas Agricultural 

 Experiment Station. 



During those same years that the unnamed, fall-sown 

 Kanred wheat was meeting its most severe test in winter's 

 cold, another unknown grain was being equally tried, 

 farther north, by shortened season and early fall frosts. 

 To get the beginning of this story it is necessary to go 

 back to the time of the pioneers on the plains of western 

 Canada. 



The Indians looked on in amazement while the first 

 w^hite settlers, sent by the Hudson's Bay Company, dug up 

 the prairie sod with hand hoes and planted wheat and 



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