RUSSIAN WHEAT EXPERIMENTS

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24406, 4 November 1944, Page 6

RUSSIAN WHEAT EXPERIMENTS

PERENNIAL SELFSOWING VARIETY SIMILAR WORK PLANNED IN NEW ZEALAND The progress of Russian experiments to perfect a perennial self-sowing wheat is reported in United States newspapers. A leading Soviet scientist, Nikolay, Tsitsin, has been working for 15 years to develop a wheat which will come up year after year without seeding,, resist drought and disease, survive killing 'winters, wind, and rain, and yield at least 25 bushels to the acre.

According to the American reports Tsitsin has produced No. 34,085, a strain which meets most specifications. This strain, a cross between wheat and couch grass, grows summer or winter, is drought and rust proof, pollenises itself, thrives even in salty soil (producing salty wheat), and has a gluten content of 60 per cent., equal to that of the best annual wheats. Experimental plantings have yielded two crops (totalling about 68 bushels an acre) a year. No. 34,085, however, still has some serious defects. It bears wrinkled grain, is hard to mill, and is not as resistant to frost as Tsitsin would like. But foreign experts are convinced that in a. year or two Tsitsin will have produced a true many-year wheat.

The director of the Wheat Research Institute (Dr. O. H. Frankel) said the institute was well aware of the Russian experiihents through scientific literature. Some of the data mentioned in the American reports, such as a yield of 144 bushels to the acre and a gluten content of 60 per cent., seemed rather sensational, however, and scientific reports would have to be awaited before the full facts were known.

“The work itself Is, of very great importance, not only to Russia but also to other countries,” said Dr. Frankel. "The purpose behind it is more or less that the scientists concerned are creating new species of crop plants on the lines that Nature created them hundreds of thousands of years ago. These strains in themselves, and when crossed with others, can increase the range of characteristics and provide a wide scope for progress.

“Here at the Wheat Research Institute we are intending to build up material on similar lines rather more as material fop improvements in the future than for Immediate needs. It is long-range work, and it is impossible to tell where it will lead to, especially in New Zealand, where climatic conditions are less extreme and most of the land is economically used.”

Among Tsitsin’s achievements also reported in the American newspapers are the production of a new annual wheat yielding 144 bushels to the acre, quadrupling the best previous yield in the Moscow latitude. He has also obtained the first live seeds from attempts to cross wheat and rye with a desert plant which may make it possible to grow these grams almost anywhere, thus opening to cultivation 150.000,000 acres of hitherto untillable Soviet land.