B. P. I.-158. V. P. P. I. -133. 



IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF WHEAT. 



OBJECT OF THE INVESTIGATION. 



Efforts to improve the wheat plant have been numerous and have 

 accomplished important results. The work of Fultz, Clawson, 

 Rudy, Wellman, Powers, Hayne, Bolton, Cobb, Green, and Hays in 

 improving by selection, and of Pringle, Blount, Schindel, Saunders, 

 Farrar, Jones, Carleton, and Hays in improving by hybridization, 

 has resulted in giving this country many prolific strains and varieties 

 of wheat, while Garton Brothers, of England, Farrar, of New South 

 Wales, Vilmorin, of France, Rimpau, of Germany, and others have 

 accomplished the same for other portions of the world. Attempts 

 at improvement have, however, been directed primarily toward effect- 

 ing an increase in the yield rather than in the quality of the crop. 

 While the latter property has not been entirely lost sight of, selection 

 based on quality has never been applied to the individual plant, but 

 only to the progeny of otherw^ise desirable plants. 



Why selection for quality of grain in the individual plant has not 

 gone hand in hand with selection for other desirable properties is 

 perhaps to be explained by the fact that no method for such selection 

 has ever been devised. Mr. W. Farrar, of Queanbeyen, New South 

 Wales, in an address made a short time ago, said : 



Before we can make any considerable progress in improving the quality of the grain of 

 the wheat plant we shall have to devise a method for making a fairly correct quantitative 

 estimate of the constituents * * * of the grain of a single plant and yet have seeds 

 left to propagate from that plant. 



In devising a method for increasing the percentage of nitrogen in 

 wheat it becomes desirable to know the causes that produce variation 

 in this constituent of the kernel. Numerous experiments and obser- 

 vations have been made on this subject, the results of which agree in 

 the main in attributing such variation to the following conditions: 



(1) Stage of development of the kernel. 



(2) Variation in temperature of different regions. 



(3) Variation in temperature of different years in the same region. 



(4) Variation in the supply and form of soil nitrogen. 



(5) Variation in the supply of soil moisture. 



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