AUSTRALIAN WHEAT VARIETIES. 6 
EARLY BAART. 
With the development of drier areas, earlier and more drought- 
resistant varieties have been desired by growers. Millers have also 
desired better milling varieties. These demands have been partly 
met by the use of the Early Baart variety, which also came from 
Australia. It was received with four other varieties from Australia 
(S. P. I. Nos. 5075 to 5079, 1 inclusive) by the United States Depart- 
ment of Agriculture in 1900. The commercial distribution of the 
variety in this country certainly is the result of this introduction. 
In Australia it has never been a leading commercial variety, although 
it has been grown by some farmers for many years. It is one of the 
few varieties grown there which is not of Australian origin. In recent 
introductions of wheat from South Africa, varieties have been 
obtained which are identical with Early Baart. The name " Baart" 
is Dutch for bearded. It seems probable that the variety was intro- 
tiuced into Australia from the Orange River Colony or the Transvaal 
in South Africa and was originally of European origin. 
The Early Baart wheat first became commercially established in 
Arizona, but by 1914 it had been grown in Washington and soon 
spread to Idaho and Oregon. A considerable portion of the Early 
Baart wheat grown in Oregon is from seed distributed from the 
Sherman County Branch Station, Moro, Oreg. In the year 1919 
Early Baart wheat became established in California when a milling 
company 2 distributed approximately 6,000 tons of seed from Arizona 
and Washington, or about enough for sowing 175,000 acres. This 
distribution was made largely for the purpose of improving the 
milling quality of California wheat. 
* OTHER VARIETIES. 
Many other varieties of Australian wheat have been introduced 
by the United States Department of Agriculture and other organ- 
izations, and most of them have been grown in experiments in the 
Pacific coast area. In 1904 the Department obtained five varieties 
(C. I. Nos. 2824 to 2828) from Mr. William Farrer, plant breeder, of 
New South Wales, Australia. One of these, the Bobs variety (C. I. 
No. 2826), has been grown in the cooperative experiments at the 
Sherman County Branch Station at Moro since 1911, and a pure- 
line selection has been grown in the plat experiments there since 
1914. The next lot of Australian varieties was obtained by the 
department in 1905 and consisted of four varieties (C. I. Nos. 2829 
to 2832; S. P. I. Nos. 12883 to 12886) exhibited by New Zealand at the 
Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Apparently none of these varie- 
1 Accession numbers of the Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction of the Bureau of Plant Industry, 
U. S. Department of Agriculture. 
a Jones, Robert E. Wheat from the antipodes. In Country Gent., v. 84, no. 39, p. 11, 26. 1919. 
Hodges, R. E. Early Baart ewhat has made good. In Pacific Rural Press, v. 98, no. 20, p. 1. 1919. 
