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THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



NEW GRAINS FOR THE ARID REGION. 



By Arthur Chapman. 



There is a wide strip of high plains land east of 

 the Rocky Mountains, which is capable of filling 

 the depleted granaries of the world, if science can 

 fit it with a drought-resisting cereal. Roughly 

 speaking, this strip consists of about one-sixth the 

 total area of the United States. It has produced 

 millions of cattle and sheep, but no grazing country 

 can ever be a great country, and it is recognized 

 that until this strip, extending from the Canadian 

 line to the Mexican border, becomes productive in 

 the highest sense of the word, it must represent a 

 vast economic loss to the United States. 



Irrigation has gone about as far as it can go in 

 this strip. Dry farming is practiced with varying 

 success. It has come to be generally accepted to- 

 day that some new food-producing plant must be 

 developed which will fit this strange environment in 

 which high altitude and excessive drought combine 

 to defeat those who attempt to raise the ordinary 

 grains of commerce. 



PROF. I!. C. BUFFUM. 



More than twenty years ago Robert Gauss, a 

 newspaper man of Denver, grandson of Germany's 

 most eminent mathematician, began a series of ex- 

 periments with wheat with the hope of developing 

 a drought-resisting plant. Mr. Gauss carried on his 

 experiments for several years, but, unable to find 

 aid, was forced to give up on account of the question 

 of personal expense. He wrought such changes in 

 his wheat, after successive plantings, that other men 

 of science became interested, and today the devel- 

 opment of a drought-resisting wheat, or some simi- 

 lar cereal, is the ambition of many scientists. Ex- 

 perimenting with the drought-resisting qualities of 

 many plants is the chief work at the Carnegie Desert 

 Laboratory, at Tucscon, Arizona, as well as at vari- 

 ous government experiment stations and agricul- 

 tural colleges in the West. 



The most important work in recent years along 

 this line has been accomplished by Prof. B. C. Buf- 

 fum of Worland, Wyoming. When Russian emmer 

 was introduced into this country Prof. Buffum rec- 

 ognized that here was a plant which might be de- 

 pended upon to extend the food-producing area of 

 the West. After several years of experimenting, he 

 has produced an improved emmer, which, though 

 a true mutation or "sport" of the common Russian 

 emmer, is so greatly superior to the parent stock 

 that the new product will hardly be recognized as 

 belonging to the same family. It is larger, darker in 

 color, heavier in the straw and head, and is much 

 more prolific under arid land conditions than the 

 original type. 



Heretofore the securing of sports or mutations 

 has been considered entirely accidental. They have 

 simply happened, and the reason for them has not 

 been understood. In Prof. Buffum's work he has 

 succeeded in deliberately producing mutations, and, 

 though the character of the changes secured may be 

 a matter of surprise, their value is none the less real. 

 Prof. Buffum has found that mutations are particu- 

 larly valuable in close-fertilizing small grains, for 

 when once secured they come true to type for an 

 indefinite time. 



The same conditions which help produce muta- 

 tions seem to be of value in the work of crossing. 

 Prof. Buffum has secured wheat-emmer hybrids, the 

 value and qualities of which have not been yet de- 

 termined, but there is no doubt that some of them 

 will prove important additions to western agriculture. 

 The first of these wheat-emmer hybrids caused such 

 a remarkable breaking up of the wheat and emmer 

 characters that the result was considered purely 

 accidental. A second cross, however, under the 

 same conditions, has given the same wide variations, 

 even to the second generation. Usually the result 

 of a cross is a plant which, in the second generation 

 resembles one or the other of its parents, or proves 

 intermediate. In the wheat-emmer hybrids pro- 

 duced by this Wyoming wonder-worker, intermedi- 

 ates are absent. Prof. Buffum has reversions to all 

 the previous known types of these grains, and many 

 forms, both good and bad, which seem to have no 

 precedent. This breaking up of the species has given 

 unparalleled opportunity for the selection and fixation of 

 improvements. For example, from the first successful 

 cross of winter wheat and winter emmer Prof. Buffum 

 has now planted forty-two types of beardless winter em- 

 mer and also numerous types of a new grain which is so 

 different that it will stand as a new species. 



Prof. Buffum conducts the most remarkable experi- 

 mental farm in the West 'at Worland. He has one hun- 

 dred and eighty selections of winter grains now growing, 

 and has secured interesting and important results in breed- 

 ing other plants, more particularly alfalfa and potatoes'. 

 He has developed a new beardless winter wheat which 

 seems to be even more hardy than the winter emmer, or 

 even winter rye. It has been planted as far north as the 

 government experiment farm at Alberta, Canada, where 

 it has proved its hardiness under extremely adverse con- 

 ditions. 



If the plateau region of the west realizes the predic- 

 tions of those who believe that its millions of unproduc- 

 tive acres will eventually become productive through plant 

 adaptation, the credit must go to those like Prof. Buffum, 

 who have approached the work of agricultural revolution 

 in true scientific spirit. 



