A NEW WHEAT.

Bush Advocate, Volume XX, Issue 937, 3 February 1908, Page 2

A NEW WHEAT.

Professor Wallace. <>l Kdinburuh, lias returned from America (reports the- London Standard) wiih news iliai the Agricultural Hotanicnl Department luis discovor*d a -type of wheat iv h if)i will thrive ou ;i lOin. rainl'ull. This is of j^reat irnporiance of <m>hiirmt'd. as such a tyjie would allow many millions of acres to be> put under wheat in Northern Australia, Queensland, Rhodesia, Cape Colony, and Nubia, all British possessions, whore, agriculture needs drou<iht-re-si<tin<j; crops. Professor Wallace says: "Great local differences in rainfall are the main trouble of the American botanists, but ji typo of wheat has now been found which will f^row in a region with lOin. of rain. Now. to mate with it, or, rather, to alternate with it, to maintain fertility and to supply much-needed vegetable matter in the .soil, a dry land resume is required. A second search has found the desiderated plant in a new variety of lucerne. Many new varieties of lucerne, not to mention other fodder and crop plants, have, been discovered in different parts of the world by tho officers of the division of plant introduction. In early summer one expert returned from the limits of northern cultivation in the Arctic Circle with tlirou new types of lucerne — ono with a yellew Hower not improbably connected with our own weedy species, sickle medick, Medica^o falcata. It is hoped that a plant with a greater power than common varieties of resist iny the effects of cold weather may have been found. The weak point of lucerne which has been in cultivation in climates that become cold in winter is its liability to be, checked in growth by frost, and to j^o under during tho cold season. In Argentina, where lucerne has been successful on a wry large scale, the method of overcoming the difficulty is to sow with it either ryograss or Hromus inermis, which \ grow in the winter months and disappear during The warm weather of summer, when the lucerne is at its best." !