UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



BULLETIN No. 618 



Contribution from the Bureau of Plant Industry 

 WM. A. TAYLOR, Chief 



JW^SWIL 



Washington, D. C. 



PROFESSIONAL PAPER 



March 13, 1918 



EXPERIMENTS WITH DURUM WHEAT. 



By Carleton R. Ball, Agronomist in Charge, and J. Allen Clark, Scientific 

 Assistant, Western Wheat Investigations, Office of Cereal Investigations. 



CONTENTS. 



Introduction 



Sources of data 



History 



Agronomic adaptation and production. 



Adaptation 



Production 



Page. 

 1 

 1 

 3 

 5 

 5 



Description and key. . 

 Varietal experiments . 



Geographic scope. 



Results obtained . 

 Summary of results. . . 



6 Bibliography. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Extensive experiments with the durum wheats have been con- 

 ducted in this country for the last 10 to 15 years. During this period 

 their commercial importance has increased steadily. At first they 

 were regarded commercially with indifference, then with hostility, 

 and finally with approval. Numerous bulletins have discussed their 

 introduction and adaptation and also their value under more or less 

 limited conditions. These publications are listed alphabetically by 

 authors at the end of this bulletin. 



The purpose of the present bulletin is to assemble the principal 

 accumulated experimental data on yields of durum wheat in the 

 United States. Many of these data are here published for the first 

 time. Some of them, however, have been published previously in 

 the bulletins cited. The bibliography also includes citations of 

 bulletins containing some results obtained with durum wheat which 

 are not presented here. This bulletin discusses the history of durum 

 wheat in the United States, the statistics of production, the charac- 

 ters and relationships of the important varieties, and the results of 

 experiments conducted at 30 field stations. 



SOURCES OF DATA. 



The experimental data have been derived from three chief sources, 

 namely, experiments conducted cooperatively by the Bureau of 

 Plant Industry and State agricultural experiment stations, experi- 



14644°— IS— Bull. 618 1 



