PLANT BREEDING 



Owing to the fact that a considerable part of the time of the 

 head of the department was devoted to the additional duties which 

 devolved upon him as acting Dean and Director of the College of 

 Agriculture and Agricultural Experiment Station, and as a result of 

 interruptions occasioned by other changes in the Staff, it was considered 

 advisable to confine the work of the department for the year to the 

 breeding of wheat, alfalfa, and the grain sorghums. The w^ork with 

 beans and sweet corn, and the transpiration studies with alfalfa were 

 postponed. 



WHEAT 



The total acreage of experimental wheat plots at Yuma was 4.08 

 acres. The total yield of grain on this area was 7S62).h pounds of 

 cleaned grain. The average yield per acre was 30.9 bushels. The alkali 

 spots of the Dyer block reduced the yield to some extent, but in no 

 place was the alkalinity strong enough to entirely prevent the plants 

 from maturing seeds, except in two or three small places of negligible 

 area. The growth on at least one-eighth acre was somewhat dwarfed 

 on account of alkali. Some of the plots lodged badly while the plants 

 were in bloom, and a high percentage of heads on these plots was 

 completely sterile. Cold weather and a light frost came while some 

 of the earlier strains were in bloom, and prevented them from setting 

 a full crop of seed. 



Owing to these abnormal conditions of weather during the growth 

 of the crop, the yields of the different varieties in 1916 were very 

 different from yields obtained in 1915. The highest yielding variety 

 of 1916 was the Early Baart, making an average of 49.46 bushels per 

 acre, while one plot of this variety yielded at the rate of 56.98 bushels 

 per acre. This strain has been developed from a head selection made 

 from a large field plot, and is proving to be very productive in the 

 large test plots. The average yields for all the large test plots are 

 given in Table IX. 



TABLK IX. WHKAT VARIETIES AT YUMA, 1916 



Name of variety 



Early Baart 



Sonora 



White Algerian. 

 Red Algerian . . . 



Yield 



per 



acre 



bushels 



49.46 

 39.08 

 29.00 

 26.16 



