ON ARTIFICIAL POLLINATION OF WHEAT 



By William B. Alwood, Blacksburg, Va. 



The writer began the study of varieties of wheat in 1882 upon taking 

 charge of the field experiments of the Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station, 

 and continued the work until the summer of 1886. Primarily the lines of in- 

 vestigation undertaken were purely practical, yet I trust enough of scientific 

 importance was noted to warrant the presentation of these notes. 



My attention was largely directed to grouping the cultivated varieties 

 which could be obtained from home and foreign sources into several more or 

 less clearly defined groups which have been published elsewhere (4th Rep. 

 Ohio Agr'l Exp. Station, 1885). 



The published accounts of work in artificial pollination of wheat which I 

 had been able to obtain up to the time of beginning this work consisted merely 

 of fragmentary notices in current publications devoted to agricultural matters, 

 and up to the present time most that has appeared has been fragmentary and 

 incomplete. 



The writer worked two seasons 1882 and 1883 before learning how to 

 manipulate the flowers so as to produce a cross with certainty. At first I 

 worked with such implements as a poor dissecting case furnished, but soon 

 confined myself to a couple pair of forceps and at last settled onto what proved 

 the most successful instrument for this work that has come to my notice. 

 This was an ordinary pair of No. 00 steel jeweler's forceps, with the ends 

 dressed down to the size of a large pin for one and one-half inches back from 

 the point, the point being left flat and one-sixteenth of an inch broad. This I 

 found to be about the only instrument necessary, though others may be found 

 convenient. My plan of operation was to select a head which suited the pur- 

 pose in view, remove the spikelets from one side and those not desired on 

 the other (usually leaving a couple more than I desired to operate upon). 



It was generally found convenient to operate upon about five spikelets and 

 of these the central flowering glumes were removed, leaving but the two outer 

 ones. From these the anthers were then removed by taking the flowering 

 glume between the thumb and forefinger of the left hand and carefully insert- 

 ing the closed blades of the forceps between the glumes and palae, slowly re- 

 leasing them until the parts are sufficiently opened to expose the enclosed 

 anthers and stigma of the flower. By careful pressure of the thumb and 

 finger of the left hand the flower is kept open and a dextrous operation with 

 the forceps removes all three of the anthers at one operation. This completes 

 the first part of the work. (The couple of spikelets left unworked are for 

 observation as to maturity of the flowers. It is unsafe to allow them to 



