Jan. 1, 1925 
39 
A Study of Variability in the Burt Oat 
Table VI .—Data on inheritance of basal hairs in 9 strains of Burt oat grown at 
the Akron Field Station and at the Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station in 
1921 —Continued 
\ 
Strain number and basal hairs in 
parent kernels a 
Basal hairs in progeny 
Number of kernels 
hairs— 
with 
Percentage of kernels with 
hairs— 
Abundant 
Few 
Absent 
Abundant 
Few 
Absent 
Long 
Mid- 
l ngth 
Long 
Mid¬ 
length 
KANSAS AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT 
station— continued 
Kansas No. 6094: 
Few_ 
0 
0 
254 
33 
0 
0 
88.5 
11.5 
Absent_ _ 
0 
0 
192 
329 
0 
0 
36.9 
63.1 
All strains: 
' Abundant midlength_ 
632 
566 
304 
8 
41.9 
37.5 
20.1 
.5 
Few_ 
0 
1,819 
1,572 
305 
0 
49.2 
42.5 
8.3 
Absent_ ... .. _ 
o 
45 
1,811 
3, 436 
0 
.9 
34.2 
64.9 
both stations 
Abundant long_ 
492 
36 
0 
0 
95.0 
5.0 
0 
0 
Abundant midlength_ 
739 
1,316 
400 
16 
29.9 
53.3 
16.2 
.6 
Few__ 
14 
2,814 
2,817 
441 
.2 
46.2 
46.3 
7. 3 
Absent... _ 
8 
150 
3, 013 
5,169 
. 1 
1.8 
36.1 
62.0 
There is much variation in the number 
of twists and the length of the twisted 
portion. This type of awn is illus¬ 
trated in Plate 3, A. 
Of the nontwisted class, the awns in 
the long subclass often were fully as 
long as the twisted awms, but did not 
show the twisting of the lower portion 
or any geniculation. The nontwisted 
long awn is illustrated in Plate 3, B. 
The nontwisted short subclass was more 
variable than any other class. Awns 
placed in this subclass varied from a 
fairly well developed awn about 15 
mm. in length down to very short 
bristlelike appendages, almost invis¬ 
ible to the naked eye. Kernels having 
the short awns are shown in Plate 3, C. 
When no awns were found, they w T ere 
described as absent. Awnless kernels 
are shown in Plate 3, D. 
The data on awns in the 1920 
progeny are presented in Table VII. 
They indica+e that all types of awns 
were found in the progeny of each 
parental awn class. As a rule, how¬ 
ever, parental kernels in each awn 
class had a tendency to produce a 
greater number of progeny kernels of 
the parental class than of any of the 
other classes. Parental kernels having 
twisted awns produced progenies hav¬ 
ing twisted awns on about 56 per cent 
of the kernels, nontwisted long awns 
on 10 per cent, nontwisted short on 5 
per cent, and aw r ns absent on 30 per 
cent. In the progenies of the parental 
nontwisted class about 15 per cent of 
the awns were described as nontwisted 
long, 55 per cent as nontwisted short, 
19 per cent absent, and about 11 per 
cent twisted. The parental kernels 
described as having aw T ns absent pro¬ 
duced progenies in which the awns of 
about 69 per cent of the kernels were 
described as absent, 13 per cent as 
nontwisted short, 8 per cent as non¬ 
twisted long, and 10 per cent as 
twisted. 
An examination of the data for each 
of the strains given in Table VII shows 
that in four of the seven strains in 
which parental kernels having the 
twisted awns were found, from 50.5 
to 86.3 per cent of the progeny kernels 
were described as having awns of that 
class. In Kansas No. 6004 only 21.2 
per cent and in Kansas No. 6052 only 
26.4 per cent of the progeny kernels 
grown from parental kernels with 
twisted awns were described as having 
twisted awns. As the two awn sub¬ 
classes later described as nontwisted 
long and short were not separated in 
describing the parental kernels from 
which the 1920 crop was grown, the 
progenies representing these two sub¬ 
classes may be considered together in 
discussing the results obtained in 1920. 
If this be done it is seen that in three 
of the strains the kernels having non¬ 
twisted awns produced rather high 
