FLAX PLANT RESEARCH.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 303, 23 December 1929, Page 11

FLAX PLANT RESEARCH.

PROGRESS OF EXPERIMENTS. STUDY OF ONE VARIETY. (By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, Saturday. The flax research committee of the Council of Scientific and industrial Research recently received a progress report from Dr. J. S. Yeates, who is in charge of the scientific investigations now being made in the question of cultivating phorlnium tenax. Recent work has consisted chiefly in planting out seedlings and in cultivation of the trial plots. Manurial experiments for the control of yellow leaf have also been carried out. The present summer is to be spent chiefly in carrying out observations and experiments on the pollination of flax.

Some results of interest are already indicated by the seedling plants which have been grown. Two varieties of white butted flax each give a mixture of white butted and red butted seedlings in about equal numbers.

Commenting on this, Dr. Yeatcs reports: —"Seed of several brown or purplish varieties has bceii grown, and in every case gives rise to a mixture of bronze and green seedlings. The most important of these varieties is the 'ngaro,' our variety No. 152. The breeding and behaviour of these varieties suggested that chromosome behaviour might be involved. This was found to be so. No. 152 lias 32 chromosomes in each Cell, whereas all other varieties of flax so far examined have 24. These chromosomes are believed to determine the .characters of a plant and their inheritance. The possession of a distinct number of chromosomes renders it highly improbable that variety 152 has arisen as a hybrid between ordinary flax varieties. The various possibilities suggested by this different chromosome number are being carefully studied."

The "ngaro , * plant, it was stated, probably arose as a "sport."