736 
Journal of Agricultural Research 
Vol. XXXI, No. 8 
The seed contains no reducing sugar. Choate (5), by micro¬ 
chemical means, was able to detect reducing sugars at 18 hours. 
Under the conditions in which this material was grown, no reducing 
sugar was found until the second day. At two days there is good 
reason to believe the sugar to be maltose rather than a hexose sugar. 
In fact at no time is there evidence of more than a very small amount 
of hexose sugar. Le Clerc and Breazeale (28) found the amount of 
reducing sugars in the axes increased up to about the ninth day, when 
100 axes (plumules and roots) contained 262.3 milligrams of reducing 
sugar. The greatest amount of reducing sugar shown by this work 
is also at the ninth day, but the amount is only 25.3 milligrams in 
100 axes. The reducing sugar in the seed in the two cases parallel 
each other remarkably well, both in the maximum amount and in 
the increase and decrease. The source of the difference in these 
results must, therefore, lie first in the rate at which the starch is 
hydrolyzed in the seed, being more rapid in the case of plants grown 
in water cultures than in the case of plants grown in soil. The 
excess sugar formed in water cultures must then be translocated to 
the axes more rapidly than it is required by those organs, while, 
when grown in soil the translocation is proportional to the rate it is 
used. Le Clerc and Breazeale {28) have shown nearly equal per¬ 
centages of sugars in the axes and in the seeds, while these results 
show 12 per cent of sugar in the seeds and less than 2 per cent in the 
axes, in 9-day-old plants. Green {18) found invert sugar to increase 
during 13 days germination of castor-oil beans. Miller {32) reached 
the same conclusion with Helianthus annuus seeds. Newton {33) 
reports larger quantities of reducing sugars in leaves of hardened 
winter wheat. 
The data here presented as total sugar show no evidence of sucrose 
formation taking place in the seed. The plumules appear to have 
sucrose in addition to sugars of translocation. Brown and Morris 
{3)j working with barley, were unable to find that maltose passes 
from the endosperm to the embryo, but assumed that it changed to 
simple sugar during translocation. When a larger amount of sugar 
is found after hydrolysis than before, it is assumed that sucrose is 
present. Le Clerc and Breazeale {28) did not determine the latter 
point, but they agree that no sucrose is formed in the seed. Colin 
and Belval (7) find sucrose to increase regularly in the stem. Trans¬ 
location has taken place more rapidly into the roots than the sugar 
is used. Newton {S3) finds as much as 16 per cent of the dry weight 
of winter-hardened winter wheat leaves to be sucrose. Green (18 ), 
in castor bean, finds first a decrease and then an increase of sucrose 
up to 13 days. Choate (5) finds no maltose in the seed. 
The dextrins follow very closely between the starches and sugars, 
of which they are intermediate products. Where the starch shows 
a rapid loss the dextrins increase, and they drop off at about the same 
rate as the total sugars. At no time is there enough dextrin in the 
axes to indicate that translocation of dextrins takes place. Lindet 
(29) , working with germinating barley, reports no dextrin, but sug¬ 
gests that the starch is changed to sucrose directly. 
Starch is the principal storage polysaccharide of wheat, although a 
certain amount of triticin is reported by Thatcher (41). Spoehr (37) 
points out that it is not the total amount of carbohydrates, but the 
