374 REPORT OF THE CONFERENCE ON GENETICS 
farmer, on the other hand, wants more grain and more straw than he has 
at present, a not unnatural demand, perhaps, but one difficult to supply 
when one comes to remember that, as it is, we grow larger crops per acre 
than any country in the world, with the possible exception of Denmark. 
The starting point of the experiments was to import as many high- 
quality, or, as the miller terms them, “ strong’ * wheats, as possible, and 
grow them in this country to determine whether any were suitable for our 
conditions of farming. The attempt met with a certain amount of 
criticism, for it has always been supposed that strength was determined 
by climatie conditions, though it was known that wheat from California, 
Australia, and India, countries blessed with more sunshine than we enjoy, 
are far from strong. As the result of numerous trials, it was found that 
there was a certain amount of justification for this belief, for numerous 
wheats of great strength, when imported, deteriorated immediately under 
our climatic conditions. But—and this fact is of fundamental importance 
—varieties were found which have retained their strength perfectly for four 
seasons under the most varied conditions, and now give just as good 
results in the bakehouse as they do when grown in their native lands. 
We know of one case where one of these varieties has been grown for 
fourteen consecutive years in this country and is still as good as when it 
first reached these shores. It may be taken as proved, then, that some 
varieties of wheat are strong under our conditions of climate. 
At the same time the majority of these are of no use to our farmers, 
for they lack the yielding power both of grain and straw which is 
essential here if profits are to be made. 
Whilst these tests were in progress the inheritance of all the morpho- 
logical characters of wheat was traced in detail and the foundations laid 
for a series of breeding experiments. These morphological characters 
need not concern us here, for they are of no importance when compared 
with problems of quality. They served simply to show the proper 
methods of carrying out the investigation we had in view, and to prove 
that the mere ringing of the changes on beards or no beards, rough or 
smooth chaff, was of little economic importance. 
Those who continually handle wheat soon learn to appraise its value 
from the baker’s standpoint, but itis not an easy matter to give a descrip- 
tion of the difference between a strong and a weak grain which the un- 
initiated would appreciate readily. On the whole, strong wheats are 
characterised by a hard and more or less translucent endosperm, and 
frequently by a dull bloom difficult to describe. Weak wheats, on the 
contrary, are generally soft and opaque. Again, speaking in a broad 
sense, strong wheats, owing to their richness in proteids, as a rule 
have a higher nitrogen content than our English wheats, and in cases 
where judgment by eye does not appear satisfactory this affords a useful 
method of checking the result. 
* Tn view of the fact that it is occasionally stated that strength is associated with 
the property of absorbing much water and giving a large number of loaves per sack of 
flour, it may be pointed out that strength is defined as “ the capacity to yield large, well- 
piled loayes.”” By way of example,some Russian and most Indian wheats give a large 
number of loaves per sack. ‘These loaves, however, are small and close in texture, and 
as bread has to be judged from the consumer’s standpoint, such wheats cannot be con- 
sidered as strong. 
