WHEAT SOWING.

Otago Witness, Issue 3764, 4 May 1926, Page 12

WHEAT SOWING.

Wheat is not a crop which can be sown at a moment’s notice. It is true that this cereal can be seeded either in early winter or in the spring season, but there are a thousand and one matters which must be considered ere sowing perhaps one of the most exhausting crops grown on the farm. In the first place, it should be asked whether the land is in trim to grow a good crop of wheat—a poor one is an unnecessary waste of money. Wheat should be sown early, and as the plant generally grows quickly and stoutly on clean, sound land thin seeding is advisable. The land, for some time before seeding, should not be deeply stirred, but be allowed to consolidate. Any surface cultivation should be of the slightest, as the frosts will scon cause the land to shatter, and in the spring provide a proper surface. Wheat may be sown on a moist seed-bed, but care should be taken not to harrow the surface too much, or too seun after rain, especially on “running” land. On heavy land, water gutters should be made to cairy off surplus water. If this is neglected tn€ wheat at the bottom of the "lands” will die out during winter. Although one cannot be too careful in the general handling of lands intended to grow wheat, there are other important matters regarding the quality and ancestry of the wheat sown for seed which are every bit as essential in the raising of a heavy cereal crop. The seed once secured must be carefully pickled. Care should be taken that the seed, as well as being of a prolific strain, is sound. In o-der to realise the liability to injury and its importance, says F. Vanzetti, in the Western Mail, it is’well to remember that the grain of wheat is composed of the embryo (which contains so much of the future plant that in its section the future roots and stems are visible), and the endosperm (which consist of starch and gluten, and provide the material for the nourishment of the young plant until it is able to derive its food from air and soil). Embryo and endosperm are enveloped in many protective layers, each of definite design and purpose. The first is the pericarp, which is the bran, and is of colourless, fibrous material. This overlies the testa —a fibrous band containing most of the colouring matter which determines the white or red, grained varieties. Beneath this is found the perisperm, which protects the gluten layer, that in its turn surrounds the endosperm or starch celk, which form the bulk 6f the grain. Harvesting 'injuries to the grain can be variable in depth and position. The damage is done to the seed coats over the radicle, which contains the rudimentary roots of the future plant, but often the radicle itself ; s either broken off or seriously damaged. Recent investigations by Miss Hurd, an American research worker, showed that seed with injured coats was easily killed by the wet pickling process of bluestone. This discovery would account in a measure for the tnin stands of crons sown with machine-dressed seed treated with blueetone solution. It appears that the solution penetrates the embryo through the fissure or crack caused by threshing. This was counterproved by the check of treating similar wheat, handthreshed, with the same bluestone solution, when it was found that no fatal results followed. Parallel results were obtained with the formalin treatment. The investigation also revealed the fact that seed with a break in the coats when in the soil was liable to invasion from saprophlytic fungi. These constitute an important group of enemies to successful cereal culture in some soils. It has been

proved that the unbroken seed coat ordinarily affords absolute protection against attacks of living seeds by these fungi. A chaffy sample -may be cleaned by grading, but no amount of grading will class out the injured kernels. Neither is a germination test of any value for the detection of injured seed because, unless the whole of the embryo ia broken off (which is rarely the case) germination takes place rignt enough, only to be followed by stunted development of the plant.