THE IMPROVEMENT IN THE YIELD 01 INDIAN WHEAT. 189 



grown b}'' tis at Ptisa under diy farming conditions and later on 

 at Lyallpur on tlie Chenab Colonj^ of the Punjab under canal 

 irrigation. In tliis way we were enabled to begin acquiring first- 

 hand experience of growing wheat under Indian conditions. 

 This experience has proved essential to the development of the 

 work and an}'' success we have obtained therein has been, in 

 our opinion, largel}^ due to otir having taken up the agricultural 

 side of the work in addition to its more purely botanical 

 aspect. 



It was found that the wheat crop as grown by the cultivators 

 was in almost all cases a mixture of a large number of varieties 

 and that the first thing to do was to resolve these mixtures into 

 their constituents. No useful work can result from dealing with 

 these mixtures. Some of the constituents may be really excellent 

 types in all respects, but their agricultural characters and milling 

 and baking qualities, would be masked by the mass of inferior 

 sorts making up the bulk of the sample. All that an examination 

 of such samples would tell us is the average quality of all the 

 wheats of any particular tract. 



Two distinct stages are involved in the resolution of these 

 wheat mixtures. In the first place the various species are 

 separated into their botanical varieties and this is done by aii 

 examination of the ripe ears in the laborator^^ The second stage 

 in the resolution of the mixtures is the separation of the botanical 

 varieties (which in the laboratory appear uniform) into what we 

 have called agricultural types. If a large number of ears of the 

 same botanical variety are sown separately next to next and the 

 cultures examined it will in many cases be found that they differ 

 from each other in many field characters such as foliage, general 

 habit of growth, time of flowering, resistance to rust, standing- 

 power and in yield and quality of grain. These field characters 

 are not recognised by systematic botany, but they are of by far 

 greater importance to the cultivator than colour of chaff, etc. 

 Thus what a systematic botanist would call a pure wheat is often 

 a mixture of many different kinds. The determination of the 

 ultimate units of our mixtures can therefore only be done by the 

 close study in the field of a large number of cultures each starting 



