BUREAU OF PLANT INDUSTRY, 151 



Losses from tlio winterkilling of wheat have been very severe in 

 different years, due apparently to several causes. Cooperative ex- 

 periments in breeding wheat for winter hardiness have been estab- 

 lished at the State experiment stations in Kansas and Minnesota. 

 Already some promising winter-hardy strains have been assembled 

 for use as a basis in breeding and studies of adaptation to severe 

 conditions. 



Very extensive studies of inheritance in wheat are being carried 

 on at the Arlington Experiment Farm and at tlie Cornell Agricul- 

 tural Experiment Station. Various characters of the wheat plant are 

 being studied, including the inheritance of awns, color, and other 

 characters of the glumes, color of grain, length of awns, straw char- 

 acters, and various other characters that have a more or less economic 

 importance. A very interesting feature of the work at the Cornell 

 station is the synthetic production of a plant which is practically 

 indentical Avith the Avild eiumoi- or so-called wild wheat of Palestine. 



OATS. 



In cooperation with the Iowa xVgricultural Experiment Station, 

 the oat variety lowar has been pro<Uiced by selection from the Sixty- 

 Day variety. This is a high-yielding early strain of white oats, pro- 

 ducing several bushels more per acre than ordinary varieties. It was 

 first distributed to selected Iowa farmers in the spring of 1919, and 

 about 250 acres were grown this season. 



Extensive breeding operations for the improvement of oat varieties 

 are being conducted in coo]>eration with the Cornell Agricultural Ex- 

 periment Station. Several strains of high-yielding power for differ- 

 ent districts in New York State have been developed and are now 

 being grown by cooperating farmers in the districts to which. they 

 have been found adapted. 



BARLEY. 



Trebi, a Crowed barley, originated in cooperation with the Idaho 

 Agricultural Experiment Station by selection from a mixture ob- 

 tained in Asia !Minor, has been found especially well adapted to con- 

 ditions, both dry land and irrigated, in southern Idaho, where its 

 commercial production was begun in 1918 and now totals about 3,000 

 acres. 



The Sandrel variety, produced in cooperation with the Minnesota 

 Agricultural Experiment Station by selection from a Calif ornian 

 barley o])tained originally in Moravia, has given excellent results and 

 has been distributed to agricultural experiment stations for further 

 trial in order to determine its range of adaptability. 



]>tirley breeding with definite reference to the inheritance of sev- 

 eral important characters, such as awns, adherent hulls, color of 

 kernels, and size and shape of embryo is under extensive investiga- 

 tion in cooperation with the agricultural experiment stations of Idaho 

 and Minnesota. 



VELVET BEANS. 



The rapidly increasing importance of velvet beans in the South is 

 perliaps the most striking agricultural phenomenon of recent years. 

 It is due primarily to the development of new early-maturing varie- 

 ties. A recently evolved variety, the Bush velvet bean, is entirely 



