lo- 
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
DEPARTMENT BULLETIN No. 1343 
Washington, D. C. 
October, 1925 
IMPROVED OAT VARIETIES FOR THE CORN BELT 
By L, C. Burnett, Chief hi Cereal Breed in ff, Iowa Agricultural Experiment 
Station, and Agent, Office of Cereal Investigations, Bureau of Plant Indus- 
try: and T. R. Staxtox, Agronomist in Charge of Oat Investigations, and 
C. W. Warburton, formerly Agronamist in Charge of Cereal Agronomy In- 
vestigations, Office of Cereal Investigations, Bureau of Plant Industry 
CONTENTS 
Page 
Introduction i 1 
History and methods of oat ex- 
periments 2 
Albion (Iowa No. 103) 3 
History and description 3 
Yields of Albion 5 
Ratio of jrrain to straw 9 
Rate-of-seeding- experiments 9 
Ricliland (Iowa No. 105) 10 
History and description 10 
Yields of Richland 11 
Comparative yields of Richland 
and Albion 13 
Rate-of-seeding experiments 14 
Page 
lowar 15 
History and description 15 
Yields of lowar 17 
Ratio of grain to straw 19 
Rate-of-seeding experiments 20 
logren 20 
History and description 20 
Yields of logi-en 21 
Rate-of-seeding experiments 23 
Yields of other varieties at the 
Iowa station 23 
Y'ields of Albion, Richland, and lowar 
oats outside of Iowa 24 
Summary 29 
INTRODUCTION 
Oats are grown over much of the United States, but the greater 
portion of the crop is produced in a belt extending westward from 
New York to Xorth Dakota and south to the latitude of the Ohio 
Kiver. From Ohio westward this area coincides very largely with 
the Corn Belt, and it is in this belt that the greater part of the oat 
crop is produced. This is shown by the data presented in Table 1, 
which gives the oat acreage and production for the 12 Xorth-Central 
States in 1919. In that year these 12 States contained three- foui'ths* 
of the total acreage and produced nearly four-fifths of the total crop 
of the United States. 
In the Corn Belt oats are exceeded in importance only by corn. 
This importance is due primarily to the fact that the oat is the most 
satisfactory intermediate crop to grow between corn and wheat or 
between corn and grass in those rotations which long practice has 
shown to be the most profitable in this area, 
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