PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 235 
There is a quality of wheat grains known as strength 
which is essential for the production of a flour such as 
can be baked into the kind of loaf which is at present 
the only one saleable in England. This quality un- 
fortunately happens to be wanting in all the strains of 
wheat which it has hitherto been possible to grow at 
a profit in this country. For this reason imported 
American and Canadian hard wheats, which possess 
this quality of strength, are worth in England some 
shillings a quarter more than home-grown wheats. 
When such strong American varieties are grown in 
this country the majority of them are rapidly found to 
lose this quality, and to become after a short time as 
‘weak’ as ordinary English wheats. Some of them do, 
however, retain their strength, and after several seasons 
—in one case fourteen—show no signs of deterioration. 
An example of a wheat of this latter type is afforded 
by Red Fife, which is the basis of the mixed wheat 
known commercially as Manitoba Hard, the latter 
consisting, as a matter of fact, of a mixture of several 
different varieties. Unfortunately these permanently 
hard wheats do not yield so large a crop as the com- 
monly cultivated English varieties, and so their higher 
price does not make up for the smaller number of 
bushels per acre obtained when they are grown. 
Biffen therefore set to work upon the problem of 
combining hardness or strength with the power of 
yielding a good crop, and with the other desirable 
qualities characteristic of the home-grown varieties. 
With this end in view Manitoba Hard was crossed with 
a typical English wheat—Rough Chaff. 
