290 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Red Kock (97003). The Berkley is the best milling and baking variety 

 of hard winter wheat that this investigation has been able to find (1912), 

 but becanse of the weakness of its straw is not a commercial success in 

 Michigan. The Red Rock attracted onr attention in the spring of 1912 

 as being the only stiff strawed wheat that had stood the previous winter 

 in good shape. Both of these varieties being hardy, a cross between 

 them may be expected to be hardy, and the hope now is that we have 

 a stiff strawed wheat that possesses the high milling and baking quali- 

 ties of Berkley. Such a wheat would bring a new epoch in Michigan 

 wheat growing, as the miller could then have Michigan grown hard 

 winter wheats to grind, and there would be no further need for the im- 

 portation of western grown hard wheats. 



A series of new wheat-crosses has been lately made between the out- 

 standingly attractive wheat (No. 28206) and the most promising beard- 

 ed wheats of the series so that should the present row series fail to 

 yield the desired combination of qualities, a new trial would be under 

 way. 



Two bulletins have recently been written on winter crops, hoping 

 that they may be in the hands of farmers before September 1. One 

 of these is on Red Rock wheat, the only hardy high yielding red wheat 

 that has been introduced among the farmers. The other is on Winter 

 barley, the new winter crop that has yielded from 152 per cent to 174 

 per. cent of Oderbrucker whenever the Winter barley has been planted 

 early enough to cover the ground before winter set in. It is clear though 

 that this new crop must be planted by September 1st if it is to succeed 

 in making high yields. Under these conditions the tops of the Winter 

 barley usually freeze down so completely as to kill nearly all of the 

 Hessian fly that may have been formed on the stems. 



Among the spring crops the bean improvement work is being pushed 

 more extensively than ever. During earlier years, the large number of 

 oats and barley selection plats gave little opportunity for the bean 

 selection work. 



The work with beans began in 1908 with individual plant selection 

 from commercial lots. It was continued in a small way until these 

 early selections had been tested out in variety series along with local 

 farmers' varieties from over Michigan. As a result a strain of Navy 

 (No. 81302) beans (now known as the Robust) was discovered that on 

 an average of three years yielded 150 per cent of the best commercial 

 variety that had been found. The result was so conclusive that no 

 variety series was considered valuable in 1915, giving opportunity for 

 more extensive indivdual plant work. The Robust had never been 

 standardized from the standpoint of shape and size. 



Need was discovered for investigation into the inheritance of shape 

 and size in beans. Some bean crosses that had been obtained in 1912 

 and 1913 gave extensive segregation of shape and size. This material 

 was taken over by Mr. P. K. Fu in the fall of 1914, and he undertook 

 the investigation of this problem in 1915 as a Master's thesis. From 

 among the 1914 individual plant selections, about 200 were chosen to be- 

 come mothers of individual progeny plats in 1915. These lots totaled 

 14,280 seeds from which 10,787 plants were obtained. The cold, rainy 

 weather of August stimulated vegetative growth and the setting of 



