52 VARIETAL CHARACTERS OF INDIAN WHEATS. 
The extension of the cultivation of soft white wheats in India 
for export tc Europe dates from the year 1883, when a report by 
Messrs. MacDougall Bros. of London, on the milling and baking 
tests of four parcels of Indian wheat was published.’ These 
wheats were as follows :— 
(1) Soft white from the Meerut and Muzaffarnagar dis- 
tricts. 
(2) Soft red from the Meerut district. 
(3) Hard red from the Banda district of Bundelkhand. 
(4) Hard white from Khandesh in Bombay. 
These wheats were milled in London by the then ordinary pro- 
cess of grinding under mill stones and also by the Hungarian or 
roller system which was at that time a novelty in Great Britain. 
Comparisons were made with English, American, Australian, Rus- 
sian and Egyptian sorts both in the mill and subsequently in 
the bakehouse. 
It is clear from the report that the hard red and hard white 
wheats were macaroni wheats and not bread wheats and are not 
usually exported to England for baking purposes. The soft white 
wheat from Muzaffarnagar was considered to be the best of the 
four, and, from that time, its cultivation and that of similar weak 
soft white sorts has been considerably advocated for export purposes. 
That this has been a great mistake will be clear when it is remem- 
bered that at the time these tests were made, most of the wheats 
used in England were ground under mill stones for which hard 
wheats andespecially hard red wheats werenot very suitable. Since 
that time, however, the modern roller mills have entirely replaced 
the old mill stones in England. In these mills the hard flinty strong 
wheats of Russia and North America can be handled with ease, and 
red wheats are almost as good as white sorts. The use of these 
flinty wheats in turn set up a new standard of flour strength and 
they were used almost entirely to mix with the weak soft wheats 
which make up the larger portion of the world’s production. Strong 
1 This report is published in Zhe Wheat Production and Trade of India, Calcutta, 1883. 
