CEREAL BREEDING IN KANSAS. 



183 



1898 five hundred and eighty-one cross-bred varieties of corn have been pro- 

 duced at our station. Each one of these, beginning with the year 1899, has 

 been analyzed by the chemical department to determine the protein content, 

 and each year all those numbers showing a nitrogen content below two per 

 cent, have been discarded. The results of the analyses for three years show 

 seventy-nine varieties that exceed two per cent, in nitrogen, while twelve of 

 these contain over two and four-tenths per cent, of nitrogen, which repre- 

 sents over fifteen per cent, of protein content. Of course, it will be under- 

 stood that all the numbers thus analyzed have been hand-pollinated each year 

 and protected from the influence of foreign pollen. It remains for further 

 analyses to demonstrate whether this increased nitrogen content is a char- 

 acter which can be maintained under field conditions and over large areas. 



Our efforts are further being directed, beginning with the present year, 

 toward the improvement of com according to a series of commercial standards 

 such as those which have been laid down by the Illinois Corn Breeding Asso- 

 ciation and kindred organizations. 



W. Saunders: Can Professor Roberts give me information in rbgard to a matter I 

 was seeking information on? I lately obtained some wheats from Oregon, one under the 

 name of Club and the other under the name of Blue Stem, and these wheats are said in 

 Oregon to produce a good crop, whether sown in the autumn or sown in the spring. They 

 can practically either be treated as spring wheats or winter wheats. That is, it the winter 

 grain does not come through in good condition, all the farmer has to do is to sow a little 

 in the bare places some of the grain in the spring, and it will ripen with the seed sown 

 the fall before. Is it true or not? 



H. F. Roberts: I don't know anything about that. That sounds like a California 

 story. 



W. J. Spillman: Mr. Chairman, I am from Oregon and Washington, and I can 

 answer the question. I have grown wheat out there for ten years, and I want to say 

 there are three varieties of spring wheat which are almost universally grown in that great 

 region out there, two being Club wheats, the Blue Stem being a peculiar local variety of 

 long-headed wheat not closely related to the Blue Stem of Minnesota, being another 

 variety altogether. Those are all spring wheats; that is, if sown in the spring they will 

 ripen and bear a crop. But they are universally sown in the fall of the year, because 

 any wheat in that section, when it does not freeze out, will yield from twenty to fifty per 

 cent, more if sown in the fall than in the spring; for that reason they sow them in the 

 fall. But they have been searching for a better wheat out there, and I undertook the job 

 of finding a winter wheat in that section. I first sent several hundred letters to farmers 

 asking about suggestions as to what the experiment station should work for, and every 

 man who answered the letter made the same suggestion; that was, "Give us a winter wheat 

 that is adapted to this country. We sow the spring wheats in the fall, and they freeze 

 out in the wintertime." The winter before last they had to sow them all again in the 

 spring. And we v/ent to work and experimented with several hundred varieties of winter 

 wheat and found that we were chasing a wild goose. We went to work and began 

 breeding wheats and got immediately what we wanted, and discovered Mendel's law in 

 operation. 



The Chair: I think it would be highly gratifying to Mendel if he could hear how 

 his law is being demonstrated from both lines of approach, working forward and back- 

 ward. We have an illustration of it here. 



