CROSS 7 WHEAT.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 40, 26 November 1937, Page 2

CROSS 7 WHEAT.

QUALITY AND YIELD PRAISED. (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, November 25. “The threshing returns for 1937, just published by the Government Statistician, shows a very satisfactory position regarding the new wheat called Cross 7, which has been produced by Lincoln College and the Wheat Research Institute,” said the Minister for Industries and Commerce (the Hon. D. G. Sullivan) in a statement issued today. “The area under this new wheat has increased from 1300 acres to 12,000 acres in a single year. The yield over the whole of New Zealand was 5.13 bushels an acre above that of Tuscan, the standard variety of the country, and it showed some superiority of yield in 25 out of 27 counties or divisions of counties in which it was grown. It is probable that this good yield has been largely due to the fact that Cross 7 has been sown on better land; butit will obviously yield as well as Tuscan under average conditions. The real advantage to the farmer growing Cross 7 is the certainty of an average yield, combined with much greater ease in harvesting. The advantage to the country as a whole, and indirectly to the farmer, is that Cross 7 makes such good flour, and produces so gooda loaf that its cultivation will further improve the already high quality of the common New Zealand wheats, and will work toward the elimination of the necessity for importing foreign wheats for the sake of strengthening the flour of our standard varieties.”