UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



„. BULLETIN No. 297 4 



7a£r' Contribution from the Bureau of Plant Industry *>J 



S&4*^SU WM. A. TAYLOR, Chief J&$**$&U 



Washington, D. C. 



October 28, 1915 



CEREAL INVESTIGATIONS ON THE BELLE 

 FOURCHE EXPERIMENT FARM. 1 



By Cecil Salmon, 

 Formerly Plant Physiologist, Office of Cereal Investigations. 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 

 Introduction 1 



Description of the field station 2 



Experimental methods 10 



Interpretation of experimental results 13 



Experiments with wheat 14 



Page. 



Experiments with oats 29 



Experiments with barley 34 



Experiments with minor cereals 38 



Experiments with flax 39 



Summary 40 



INTRODUCTION. 



The experiments with cereals at the Belle Fourche Experiment 

 Farm, near Newell, S. Dak., have been conducted for the following 

 purposes: (1) To determine the best crops, varieties, and races for 

 that section; (2) to improve the better varieties by selective breeding; 

 (3) to determine the best methods of cereal production; and (4) to 

 correlate differences in production with climatic and soil conditions 

 in order to determine the principles upon which the best practices 

 are based. The results of these investigations have been reported 

 in part in two previous publications. 2 The present bulletin is 

 intended to bring the work up to date and to include results that for 

 various reasons have not heretofore been given. 



1 The experiments here reported were conducted on the dry-farmed portion of the Belle Fourche 

 Experiment Farm, near Newell, S. Dak. This farm, which is located on the Belle Fourche Reclamation 

 Project, is operated by the Office of Western Irrigation Agriculture of the Bureau of Plant Industry. The 

 experiments were conducted by the Office of Cereal Investigations in cooperation with the Office of Western 

 Irrigation Agriculture. On April 1, 1912, the cooperative agreement between the Office of Cereal Investi- 

 gations and the South Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station was expanded to include the work at 

 Newell. The writer was in charge of the cereal work on the farm from its beginning (1907) until Septem- 

 ber 30, 1913, when he resigned to accept another position. He therefore has personal knowledge of 

 all the experiments here reported. 



2 Salmon, Cecil. Dry-land grains for western North and South Dakota. U. S. Dept. Agr., Bur. Plant 

 Indus. Circ. 59, 24 p., 1 fig., 1910. 



Winter wheat in western South Dakota. U. S. Dept. Agr., Bur. Plant Indus. Circ. 79, 10 p., 1911. 



4506°— Bull. 297-15 1 



