Howard, leake and howard. 239 



growth period is shortest in Bombay and Central India and longest 

 in the Punjab and North-West Frontier Province. 



The main directions in which Indian wheat can be improved 

 are two — yield and quality. The Hmited growth period, the fre- 

 quent shortness of the water-supply, and the fact that in many 

 tracts the moisture retaining capacity of the wheat soils is not 

 great, all indicate that moderate pelding wheats are hkely to be 

 the most profitable to the grower over an average of seasons. Higher 

 yielding wheats can be grown with safety to a very limited extent in 

 places where the retentive power of the soil is considerable and where 

 the growth period is longer than the average. Compared with the 

 wheats of Western Europe, where the gro\\i;h period is long, the 

 rainfall well distributed and the standard of agriculture far higher, 

 the wheats of India are only moderate yielders. Generally speak- 

 ing, the season is too short in India for the growth of such high 

 cropping wheats as those of France and England. As yield is 

 determined by the length of the growrth period and the average water- 

 supply, the plant-breeder in increasing the amount of wheat grown 

 soon reaches the limit imposed by these conditions. In the im- 

 provement of the quahty of Indian wheat, how^ever, there is much 

 greater scope for the breeder. In general, the wheats of the country 

 have poor grain qualities, both from the milling aspect and also 

 from the point of view of bread-making. Some Indian wheats do 

 not mill well while all those exported have a reputation for pro- 

 ducing weak flour. 



The method adopted in this investigation has been to compare, 

 as regards consistency, absolute weight, nitrogen content, and mill- 

 ing and baking qualities, several pure hues, of widely different 

 quahty, grown at various centres. The stations have been selected 

 so as to include as many as possible of the most important wheat 

 tracts of the Indo-Gangetic plain as well as a few places represen- 

 tative of the black cotton soils of Peninsular India. In the 

 present paper, the behaviour of Pusa 12 at a large number of sta- 

 tions is the chief subject dealt with. 



