PLANT BREEDING 



W. E. Bryan, E. H. Prkssley 



The work of the Plant Breeding Department reported herein 

 extends from January 1, 1920, to July 1, 1920. During this period 

 the entire time of the department was taken up with the wheat 

 project. Work with alfalfa and beans was taken up later in the 

 calendar year. 



In a milling and baking test which has been made with hybrid 

 wheats originated at this Station, one sort has given particularly 

 promising results. This wheat has been produced by crossing a 

 hard Macaroni wheat with the soft Sonora and six years of careful 

 selection. The following is the score of the breads produced from 

 these wheats as rendered by the Milling Department of the Kansas 

 State Agricultural College on the basis of 100 for perfect : 



Soft parent 91.75 



Hard Macaroni parent 91.50 



Hybrid (lopoj 96-58 



Kansas patent 94.16 



These wheats were grown under irrigation in the Salt River Valle>- 

 under ordinary field conditions. The yield of this hybrid was 47 

 bushels per acre, which is about 5 bushels more per acre than that 

 of the hard parent. 



The third generation of the bread wheat hybrids made origi- 

 nally in the spring of 1917 was grown in the screen garden on 

 the campus. Two lines of investigation have been carried out 

 with this material, viz : inheritance of grain texture in a cross be- 

 tween hard and soft wheats, and the inheritance of earliness in n 

 cross between early and late-maturing wheats. In making the 

 cross, a late-maturing wheat with hard, glassy grains was crossed 

 with an early maturing variety with soft grains. This combina- 

 tion made it possible for the two lines of work to be carried on 

 with the same material. The economic end sought in this work 

 is to produce a hard, early maturing wheat suitable for growth 

 under Arizona conditions. In order to understand the significance 

 of the present year's work, it will be necessary to make a study of 

 all the material which has accumulated since the initial cross. 



In the spring of 1917, thirty-three flowers of the hard-grained 

 late variety (Turkey Red, 36-36) were pollinated with pollen from 

 the soft-grained early variety (Sonora. 35). Two of these proved 



