I 
EXPERIMENTS WITH EMMER, SPELT, AND EINKORN. 9 
USES AS PARENTS IN HYBRIDIZATION. 
Because of the persistent chaff of emmer and spelt, it has been 
suggested that these grains be used to cross with wheats to prevent 
shattering. The fragile rachis of emmer and spelt is fully as objec- 
tionable as the fragile glume and kernel attachment which permits 
shattering of the common wheats. In order to avoid losses from the 
breaking up of the heads, emmer must be harvested as soon as it is 
ripe or even before. Because of this, and for reasons mentioned 
later, emmer and spelt are less desirable for hybridization than are 
many of the nonshattering varieties of wheat. Because of the rust 
resistance of some varieties of emmer, they have been used in cross- 
ing with wheats to obtain strains resistant to rust. Hayes, Parker, 
and Kurtzweil (18) have shown that a high percentage of sterility 
results from these crosses of common wheat and emmer and also that 
the rust-resistant factors are linked with the emmer characters. 
Fertile hybrids resulting from crosses of the common and club 
wheats with either emmer or spelt show a great diversity of plant 
forms, with very few pure types of wheat free from objectionable 
emmer and spelt characters in both spikes and kernels. 
Sax (42) and other investigators have noted that hybrids between 
members of the three wheat groups are more or less sterile in the 
Fj and later generations. 
Leighty and Bosknakian (25) have shown that spelt and common 
wheat are differentiated by a number of linked specific characters, 
which are present in one species and absent in the other. These 
characters, so far as observed, are not inherited independently, but 
are transmitted as a group. In crosses between spelt and common 
wheat the F t hybrid shows a dominance of the spelt, but this 
character appears in a somewhat diluted form. In the second 
generation all classes of spelt inheritance are obtained. Evidence 
is also presented by them that speltlike forms are sometimes produced 
by crossing certain wheats. 
Einkorn is of practically no value in wheat breeding, as crosses 
between einkorn and wheat are very difficult to make and are nearly 
always sterile. 
VARIETIES. 
More than 20 distinct groups of emmer, spelt, and einkorn are 
known, only part of which have been grown experimentally in the 
United States and Canada. As previously stated, spelt is not grown 
commercially in this country, except to a very limited extent, and 
einkorn not at all. Nearly all of the emmer grown in the United 
States is of one variety, so that descriptions of varieties are chiefly 
of interest to experimenters. 
VARIETIES OF EMMER. 
Three distinct varieties of emmer are known to be commercially 
grown in the United States. Two of these are bearded white- 
glumed spring varieties, and the other is a bearded black-glumed 
winter variety. A few additional varieties here described have been 
grown in experimental plats. Many additional varieties and strains 
of emmer have been grown in nursery experiments, but the yields 
or other data from them are not here given. Four varieties of 
emmer grown in plat experiments in Canada have been grown only 
