WINNIPEG, 1909. 749 
The exacting requirements of modern civilisation necessitate special sorts 
of wheat for special purposes. The baker, the confectioner, the biscuit 
maker, all have their own requirements, and modern fastidiousness has put 
a price on subtle differences that were not recognised fifty years ago. Some 
very interesting problems have thus been opened up, but they are as yet far 
from being solved. In particular many investigations have been made to 
discover why certain flours—-the so-called weak flours—only give small, squat, 
heavy-looking loaves, whilst others—the strong flours—-will yield large, 
well-shaped, well-aerated loaves. The strong wheat commands the higher 
price, since the public insists on haying the large loaf, but whether it is 
intrinsically more valuable, whether it is more nutritive, has yet to be 
ascertained. 
But the grower is not directly interested in the intrinsic value of the 
various wheats: his object is simply to produce the wheat that gives him 
the highest profit per acre. It is clearly a first requisite that the wheat 
grown should be adapted to the local conditions and resistant to the local 
diseases. In England the ‘weak’ wheats are most profitable, in spite of 
their lower price per bushel; strong wheats do not yield sufficiently heavy 
crops to pay. One of the most important of the wheat problems of the 
day is to study the laws governing the production of wheat and see how 
far it is possible to impart any desirable quality by cross breeding. Is it, 
for instance, possible to breed a wheat that shall be as suited to the 
English climate as our present sorts are and at the same time possess the 
strength of the Manitoba wheats? Still more important for the future 
wheat-supply of the world are the questions whether it is possible to breed 
early ripening varieties and varieties resistant to rust—a pest which at 
present often seriously reduces the crop and is particularly troublesome in 
South Africa and India. If the process of maturation can be hastened only 
a few days, it becomes possible to extend the wheat belt further northwards 
and to escape the harvest frosts which sometimes cause so much trouble in 
Canada. Drought-resisting wheats are also wanted—varieties with narrow 
leaves and therefore less likely to lose water by transpiration. 
The improvement of wheat by selection, in other words the search for 
new mutation forms, is going on in all parts of the world but was necessarily 
uncertain so long as progress depended on accident. The republication of 
Mendel’s work, however, has given an impetus to the study of cross-breeding 
and it is now possible to predict the way in which certain characters of the 
parents will appear in the effspring. It is not too much to say that when 
the virgin regions of the world are all inhabited the total production of 
wheat will be limited only by the limit set to the plant-breeder’s work. 
Speculation as to the future world-supplies of wheat are always inter- 
esting but are particularly liable to be falsified. The factors are incom- 
pletely known. We are only now beginning to make soil surveys. Yet 
without some sort of a world survey it is impossible to say what area is 
suitable for wheat culture. It is not known how far improvement of the 
cropping power of the plant is possible and whether we can ever hope to 
exceed the present run of yields under our present conditions of soil and 
climate. Nor is it known whether varieties can be found or made to grow 
in regions at present unsuitable, as, for instance, in northern latitudes 
where the summers are short though the days are long, or in the vast areas 
of the world where the rainfall is too small. It is especially difficult to 
attempt forecasts at the present time, when the dominating factor in the 
world’s supply is the essentially transient supply sent in by pioneer workers 
in new countries. However, all countries are alive to the importance of 
the problem and work on the subject is beginning in most of them. 
