PROM' AGRICULTURAL GAZETTE OF N. S. WALES. 



TilTAV^ 



OF THE 



/fciiVERSlTY 



OF 



Miscellaneous Publication, No. 625. 



Seed Wheat: 



AN INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION or THE RELATIVE 

 VALUE AS SEED OF LARGE PLUMP AND SMALL 

 SHRIVELLED GRAINS.* 



BY N. A. COBB. 



Introduction. 



ALL the remedies we devise for the alleviation of crop diseases are 

 but so many acknowledgments of the existence of disease. 



Our greatest hope is for the production of disease-resistant 

 varieties. These will be resistant through certain constitutional 

 characteristics. 



Next in importance to such constitutional characteristics is the 

 maintenance throughout the life of the plant of vigorous growth. This 

 involves health and strength from the very start. The seed must be 

 good, and the seedling strong, if the best results are to be secured. 



Manifestly one of the main elements in the production of a strong 

 seedling is a strong sound seed. In all annual crops, such as wheat, 

 this question of strong sound seed is an ever recurring one, and one 

 that requires careful attention. Nevertheless, it is frequently neglected . 

 It is so much neglected that I am of the opinion that the losses 

 caused by the diseases from which such crops suffer would be very 

 materially lessened if we could bring the average of our seed up to the 

 point actually found profitable by, say, the best fourth of our farmers. 



The following pages present the results of an inquiry into the state 

 of our seed wheat, with the object of defining the extent to which it 

 is practicable to add to the vitality of our wheat crops through more 

 careful attention to the seed. 



The quality of our seed wheat is looked at here only in the 

 light of a single test, namely, the relative amount of small and 



\^JS 



Fig. 1. Four grains of wheat showing varying condition A, plump ; B, slightly shrivelled : 

 C, shrivelled ; D, much shrivelled ; enlarged four diameters. 



shrivelled seed and useless or deleterious matter to be found in the 

 sample tested. Needless to say a better test would have given more 



* This investigation was suggested by the Interstate Wheat-rust Conference. Two 

 related investigations are reported in the published proceedings of the Conference. The 

 present report differs from previous ones in being the result of several years' field work 

 on an extended scale, with the object of arriving at average figures that might be made 

 the basis of definite rules for practice. 



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