L922.] 



Trials of New Varieties of Cereals. 



the most prominent peaks duly appear in both. While, there- 

 fore, the results obtained up to the present make it risky to assert 

 that, because there was a particularly bad harvest in a certain 

 year, there will be another bad one fifteen, or thirty, years 

 later, continued investigations on the same lines should result 

 in our being able to make such prophecies with a more reason- 

 able expectation of their fulfilment. 



****** 



TRIALS OF NEW VARIETIES OF 

 CEREALS. 



Part I. 

 E. S. Beaven, 



Member of Council, National Institute of Agricultural Botany. 



Tile paper deals generally with the subject of Variety Trials 

 of cereals and specially with the methods which have been used 

 by the writer with a view to securing comparative accuracy in 

 the results of field tests of new varieties. 



Terminology. — Wheat, barley and oats have each been divided 

 by systematic botanists into several " species " and " sub- 

 species," and each of these again into a greater or less number 

 of " varieties." The number of varieties recognised 20 years 

 ago was about 200 for the three cereals together. The number 

 has now been greatly increased by the artificial production of 

 hybrids. Varieties are again divided into " sub-varieties," 

 " strains," " sorts " or " forms," signifying aggregates differ- 

 ing in respect of either minor structural characters or characters 

 not always discernible to the eye but often of agricultural value, 

 as, for instance, length of growing period, hardiness, stiffness of 

 straw, root-range, ratio of grain to straw, disease resistance, etc. 



It will be convenient to use some one word for the aggregates 

 which are dealt with in variety trials. Now productions are 

 generally aggregates of plants the individuals of which have a 

 common ancestry, and in variety trials we are concerned only 

 with the inherited characters of the aggregates. The most 

 descriptive term to apply to any aggregate under trial therefore 

 appears to be race. 



D 



