RELATIVE RESISTANCE OF WHEAT TO BUNT 27 
a tall midtime or late winter wheat having awnless, long, lax, nodding 
heads and soft white kernels. It is not especially productive or of 
high quality but is of promise in developing awnless or white-kerneled 
wheats resistant to bunt. 
The so-called White Odessa differs from the Odessa variety prin- 
cipally in having white kernels. It possibly originated from natural 
hybridization between Odessa and a white-kerneled wheat, possibly 
Martin Amber. Wheats similar to White Odessa commonly occur 
as mixtures in fields of Odessa. Three strains of White Odessa were 
found which showed pronounced resistance to bunt. The one desig- 
nated as 448 1-C was developed from a plant selected from a field of 
Defiance wheat in Bannock Valley, Idaho, by Carleton E. Ball in 1915. 
The other two strains were selected from fields of wheat near Preston, 
Idaho. C. I. No. 4651 was obtained by a member of the Office of 
Grain Standardization of the Bureau of Markets, United States 
Department of Agriculture, in a field of mixed wheat, and C. I. No. 
4655 by the Franklin County (Idaho) agricultural agent, Mr. Morri- 
son, in a field of Lof thouse wheat. 
White Odessa is somewhat late and has awnless tapering spikes 
with glabrous brown glumes and soft white kernels. It is rather 
winter hardy. 
SUMMARY 
Bunt causes severe losses to the wheat crop, especially in the Pacific 
Coast States. In that region seed treatment often is ineffective in 
controlling bunt because of soil infestation, and the standard liquid 
treatments frequently cause losses due to seed injury. The growing 
of wheats immune from bunt would prevent these losses and save the 
trouble and expense of seed treatment. 
Seed of one or more strains of nearly all of the commercial varieties 
of wheat grown in the United States was smutted with spores of 
Tilletia tritici and sown during two years in nurseries at Davis, Calif., 
Moro, Oreg., and Pullman, Wash. Numerous foreign wheats and 
selections from other domestic varieties also were grown in these bunt 
experiments. 
Nearly all varieties of American wheats, all but one of the Aus- 
tralian wheats, and all of the Indian and South African wheats are 
more or less susceptible to bunt. • 
Of the four commercial classes of common wheat, the hard red 
winter wheats are the most resistant, and the white wheats as a 
class are the most susceptible, although one variety and four selec- 
tions proved to be immune or highly resistant. The hard red spring 
and soft red winter varieties are somewhat intermediate in suscepti- 
bility. One of the soft red winter varieties, however, proved to be 
highly resistant. 
The club wheats as a group are the most susceptible to bunt. The 
durum, Polish, and poulard wheats as well as emmer and spelt in 
general are somewhat more resistant than the common wheats 
except hard red winter, which is more resistant than durum and 
poulard. Einkorn in these experiments developed no infection, 
though in some studies conducted at Berkeley in 1919 it showed 25 
per cent of bunt. 
Only two common wheats, Hussar (CI. 4843) and Martin (C. I. 
4463), proved immune from bunt in these experiments. Three 
