IMPROVEMENT OF OATS. 105 



In 1898 the Kansas Station made a number of crosses of oats, but later 

 the work was given up, owing to the work on corn and wheat crowding out 

 that on all the minor cereals. This work, in which the writer was interested, 

 yielded only about S per cent, of successful crosses owing to the method fol- 

 lowed, being similar to that which had proved successful with wheat. In this 

 work a nearly ripe but usually unruptured anther was taken from the male 

 parent and placed inside the emasculated and immature flower of the female 

 parent. The pendent position of the spikelet of oats allowed the anther to 

 drop out when the flower matured and opened without coming in contact with 

 the receptive stigma. 



Garton Bros, speak of the difficulty of obtaining successful crosses in 

 oats, due to the difficulty of manipulation and of the removal of the anthers 

 without injuring the delicate stigma. They claim to have obviated this diffi- 

 culty by using naked or hull-less oats as the female parent. In my experi- 

 ments this year the hull-less oats proved very much more difficult to manage 

 than the ordinary type. 



At the beginning of the past season (1902), before commencing crossing 

 work in the experiments carried on by the Plant Breeding Laboratory, a study 

 was made of the oat flower, its time of blooming, structure, etc., and the 

 methods used in crossing were based on the knowledge acquired by this study. 

 As a result excellent work was done, and the artificial crossing of oats can 

 now be carried out with as great, or even greater, assurance of success as that 

 of any other plant. With reasonable care and skill it is possible to obtain 

 nearly 100 per cent, of successful crosses. 



The spikelet of the common oat is made up of from one to three flowers, 

 each enclosed in two tough glumes that make the hull of the ripened grain. 

 These flowers usually fit closely together and are enclosed in two thinner and 

 larger glumes, called empty glumes to distinguish them from the flowering 

 glumes. Each spikelet is hung on a slender pedicel instead of being sessile on 

 a central stem, as in wheat, barley, etc. This fact adds to the difficulty in 

 working with oats, for each separate spikelet worked must be grasped firmly 

 between the thumb and fingers while it is being emasculated or pollinated, and 

 it is probable that this handling reduces the vitality of the flower considerably. 

 The flowers in a spikelet mature on different days and vary in size, the basal 

 one being largest and blooming first, the second flower being weaker and often 

 much smaller and blooming one or two days later. In cases where there is a 

 third flower it is still smaller, often being rudimentary, and blooming a day 

 or two later than the second one. The oat flower proper is similar to that of 

 wheat, being composed of three stamens and a one-ovuled pistil with a two- 

 parted feathery stigma. In the wild oat (Avena fatua) and in many cultivated 

 varieties the flower opens out wide, allowing the double stigma to project on 

 each side and the anthers to fall down as far as the lengthened filaments will 

 let them. In oats of this type it is entirely possible that natural crossing takes 

 place, but in many of the varieties of the present day the flowers do not open 

 wide enough to allow the stigma to protrude at all, and many flowers even 

 keep the anthers inside the glumes. In others the flower often opens before 

 the spikelet has pushed out beyond the sheath of the upper leaf. Again, in 

 many varieties the anthers dehisce some hours before the flower opens. Most 



