BULLETIN OF THE 
C 
No. 39 
Contribution from the Bureau of Plant Industry, Wm 
January 20, 1914. 
EXPERIMENTS WITH WHEAT, OATS, AND BARLEY 
IN SOUTH DAKOTA. 1 
By Manley Champlin, 
Collaborator and Scientific Assistant, Office of Cereal Investigations, and Assist- 
ant Agronomist, South Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station. 
IMPORTANCE OF THE CEREALS. 
The common grain crops, wheat, oats, and barley, have been one 
of the chief sources of wealth in South Dakota for a number of years. 
In 1903, the first year of the period discussed in this bulletin, 3,424,- 
000 acres of wheat were grown in the State, with an average yield of 
13.8 bushels to the acre, or a total yield of 47,253,000 bushels. Since 
that year the acreage has remained about the same, and the yield has 
approximated 13 bushels to the acre in normal seasons. There have 
been two poor crop years, 1904, when there was a serious epidemic of 
rust, and 1911, when drought reduced the crop. The average annual 
yield of wheat in the State during the 10-year period from 1903 to 
1912, inclusive, was 12.01 bushels to the acre. 
The area devoted to the oat crop has increased from 706,000 acres 
in 1903 to 1,540,000 in 1912, or has more than doubled in the 10 years. 
The total yield likewise has almost doubled, being 52,052,000 bushels 
in 1912, as compared with 27,267,000 bushels in 1903. The average 
yield to the acre for the State during the 10-year period has been 26.3 
bushels. Barley has also more than doubled in importance. The 
total yield of this crop has increased from 10,656,000 bushels in 1903 
to 23,062,000 bushels in 1912, the average acre yield for the period 
being 23.8 bushels. 
It is apparent from these figures that wheat still ranks first in im- 
portance, with oats second and barley third, but that there is an 
increasing tendency toward greater diversification and the increasing 
of the acreage of other crops than wheat. 
1 Cooperative experiments with cereals have been conducted by the South Dakota Agri- 
cultural Experiment Station and the Office of Cereal Investigations of this bureau for the 
past 10 years. Sufficient data have been accumulated to warrant the recommendation of 
certain varieties of wheat, oats, and barley as the most profitable ones to grow in South 
Dakota and adjacent portions of the near-by States. These data, with descriptions of 
the recommended varieties, are presented in this bulletin. — Wm. A. Taylor, Chief of 
Bureau. 
13129°— Bull. 39—14 1 
