SCIENCE BULLETIN, No. 11. 



Farmers were supplied with seed-wheat, pure and true to name, advised 

 as to their special requirements, and encouraged to experiment on their 

 own account. 



The present paper will be confined to a review of the work done in the 

 improvement of the grain itself, either by selection from types already 

 established, or by the creation of new varieties by cross-fertilisation. 



Before this concerted official action there had been a great deal of good 

 work ( done by individual enthusiasts working without much encouragement. 

 In addition, to "Mr; ^Ttii Jarrer, of New South Wales, who has been called 

 by t o.ne pf . Jbis fellow^ wh'eai.-breeders " The Father of Wheat-breeding in 

 ^!u^lJryifi i * i? |ttTi{l 'wRo fia3*.b.cqti at work since 1882, the names of Mr. James, 

 Ward and Mr. Richard Marshall, of South Australia, Dr. Bancroft, of 

 Queensland, Messrs. McAlpiue and Pye, of Victoria, Mr. Maddox, of 

 Tasmania, and Mr. Berthoud, of New South Wales and West Australia^ 

 were prominent among those who, either by the creation of new varieties, 

 or the study of the rust fungi, had done excellent service in the matter of 

 wheat improvement before 1890. 



The work of Wm. Farrer has been dealt with in other publications, and 

 it is not proposed to refer more specifically to it in this place. At the salne 

 time, no discussion on the question of wheat improvement in Australia would 

 be complete without a reference to the position now occupied by the varieties 

 of which he was the creator, or to his own position as the most successful 

 and inspiring of investigators in this particular line. It is not too much ta 

 say that every one who has taken up the subject of wheat-breeding in 

 Australia has owed .his inspiration either directly or indirectly to Farrer. 

 The wheats now grown in New South Wales, and only to a somewhat smaller 

 extent in the other States, are Farrer wheats, which have supplanted the 

 older varieties in the popular estimation. How far this is the case in New 

 South Wales will be seen from the list of varieties recommended by the 

 Department, which is given on page 17. Wheats like Federation, Bobs, and 

 Comeback are universal favourites in all the States. So much is this the 

 case, that his immediate successor, Mr. G. L. Sutton, in a paper contributed 

 to the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, points out 

 that the Australian harvest must no longer be described as a golden harvest, 

 but as a brown one, 011 account of the prevalence of Federation with its 

 brown heads. 



Its popularity in Victoria is attested by Professor T. Cherry, past 

 Director of Agriculture, Victoria, in the report of the Department of Agri- 

 culture, 1907-1910. He says, " The increased yield due to the amount of 

 Federation wheat grown has been estimated at 1,000,000 bushels in the case of 

 last season's harvest (1909-1910). No other variety has, up to the present, been 

 found to give such uniformly good results in all parts of Australia." 



In another report the same authority states that in 1909 probably one 

 quarter of all the wheat grown in Victoria was Federation, and estimates, 

 that the value of the increased harvest due to this wheat was 250,000. 



