HOWARD AND HOWARD. 53 
wheats are at apremiumin England. In the last 25 years, therefore, 
the conditions of the wheat trade in England have been revolu- 
tionised both as regards method and material. No correspond- 
ing change has been made in the wheats exported from India, 
only weak wheats are exported and therefore it is not surprising to 
find that there is a belief in England that India can only produce 
weak wheats. Thus Humphries and Biffen’ in a recent paper state 
‘the fact that India, Australia and California export wheats no 
stronger than our own makes it clear that abundance of sunshine 
does not necessarily result in the production of strong wheat.” 
This is no doubt true of the soft Indian wheats now exported, but 
we do not think it is by any means true of all Indian wheats. 
That strong wheats are grown in India seems to have been 
first discovered by Farrer’ in 1899, who, in a letter to the Revenue 
Secretary to the Government of India, dated August 9th of that year, 
stated :—‘‘ On account of the high strength of the flour they produce, 
I take the liberty of recommending to you for extensive propagation 
the first two varieties of the three mentioned above, for I regard 
them as the best of all the Indian varieties which thus far have 
come under my notice. Your Indian varieties appear to vary 
greatly in the quality of flour strength.”’ 
Many enquiries in the villages in the Indo-Gangetic plain have 
elicited the information that for his own use the cultivator prefers 
hard wheats, often hard reds. These he considers to be greatly 
superior in food value to the soft wheats grown largely for export. 
The people fully understand the value of the chewing test and for 
their own consumption prefer those varieties which yield a sticky 
mass in the mouth after mastication. It will be seen from the 
letter from Messrs. Ralli Brothers (Appendix B) that if hard 
wheats were put on the market, there would be little difficulty 
in obtaining a premium for them. 
1 Humphries and Biffen, Journal of Agricultural Science, Vol. 11, 1907 
2 Farrer in the Proceedings of the Government of India (Revenue and Agricultural De- 
partment, Nos. 1—4t, October 1899). ‘These wheats came from Etawah and Muzaffarnagar in 
the United Provinces. The Muzaffarnagar wheat was not Muzaffar.agar white, but a beardless 
variety. 
