THE KINDS OF WHEAT Between two and three hundred varieties of wheat were selected from a thousand varieties tested by the United States Department of Agriculture, as best adapted to conditions in differ ent parts of this country. The vast number of varieties grown the world over prove that wheat is one of the oldest plants in cultivation. History tells the same thing. In the accounts of the childhood of many nations, the growing of wheat is fully dwelt upon, and the making of white bread from the ground grain.
The Lake-dwellers, of the early Stone Age, left behind them in their strange, prehistoric habitations, grains of wheat half the size of modern varieties. Researches have found four different species represented by the stores uncovered in Switzerland.
Wheat was the staple crop of the ancients in Egypt and Palestine. The Chinese raised it for more than three thousand years. No wonder that the botanists have given up hope of finding the wild species from which the cultivated forms have sprung. In all probability, it is no longer growing wild anywhere. However, it is believed that the original home of the wild wheat was in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and from thence it spread in all directions, and has become the principal food plant of civilized nations.
Four distinct species of wheat are recognized as parents of the cultivated varieties : i. Com mon wheat (Triticum ?ulgare) bearded and beard less, white and red, winter and spring — an ancient type. 2. Poulard wheat (T. turgidum) called Egyptian wheat, and "wheat of miracle," because its spikes break into fruitful branches. Not an old type. 3. Hard wheat (T. durum) probably derived from common wheat. 4. Polish wheat (7'. polonicum) the German Bummer, a large plant, with small heads, much grown in Spain.
Related to wheat proper are the spelts, one grained species, with a husk around each kernel, and the two-grained, or starch wheat, called em mer. These are comparatively primitive and un important grains.
How does a variety originate? This is one way.
Mr. Abraham Fultz was walking though his wheat field one day, and he happened to see a plant that bore three heads of beardless wheat, in a field that was bearded. He gathered the heads, which were large, and the kernels good. He planted them the next year, and the plants pro duced were so fruitful that he decided to save all the grain, and grow it for a number of years. In a surprisingly short time he has "fixed" the char acteristics of a fine new variety. He distributed seed and now the "Fultz wheat" is the leading soft winter wheat in this country, and is established in many foreign countries. It originated in 186z.
Another way of originating a variety is to choose only the best seed for planting, and only the best again out of each planting of the selected seeds. Gradually the plants improve in size and quality and an improved variety is achieved, whose yield is several bushels per acre better than before the selection of seed was started.
A third way to get a new and better variety is to cross artificially two varieties whose characters it is desirable to join. A sturdy straw, bearing full, large heads may result from crossing a variety with one of these traits and another with the other trait. So two varieties, each with bad faults may be combined to make a very good one.
Cross-fertilization is a delicate, but simple operation, that must be begun while the flowers are in bud, the stamens removed to prevent self fertilization in the flowers that set seed for the new strain. Pollen is carried by a camel's-hair brush to the ripe stigmas, which are protected before and after this pollenation by tissue paper, securely wrapped and tied above and below the head.
Is such work as making new varieties worth while? Mr. Burbank says: "If a new wheat were bred that would yield only one grain more to each head, Nature would produce annually, with out effort or cost for man, 15,000,000 extra bushels of wheat in the United States alone."