“RAINLESS WHEAT.”

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 144132, 30 June 1913, Page 7

“RAINLESS WHEAT.”

Since civilised man, after pooling tho experience of various races in regard to wheat bread, rye broad, oat porridge, barley cakes, rice, maize, and potatoes, is coming to a more and more universal use of the fust named as Die staff of life, it is well that science has discovered such treasures of adaptability in the wheat plant. It used to be subtropical; the ancient Roman Empire drew its supply mainly from Egypt and Tunis; and there are still important wheat exports from Egypt and India. Modern research, by selecting specialised strains of wheat and breeding them as carefully as simpler ages bred cattle, has naturalised the plant in nearly every climate. Two main foes have had to be overcome—-cold and drought. The success with ■which Canada has developed a wheat that will stand cold is well known. Every year sees tho wheat fields of the Dominion pushing nearer to the Arctic circle, and vast areas which thirty years ago were of no interest but to trappers or lumbermen brought within tho sphere of agricultural population. Less has boon heard of the not loss remarkable workpioneered mainly in those arid American States which lio just east of the .Rookies and are cut off by them from tho Pacific rainfall —whoso object has been to grow wheat without ram. Tho successes obtained there have boon repeated in South Africa by experts cmpioved under tho Union Government; am! now Dr. Macdonald, who has been in charge of this work, reports tho successful growth in tho Transvaal of a crop of absolutely “rainless” wheat—wheat, that is, grown on unirrigatod soil without a drop of rain from sowing to harvesting. Such scientific triumphs have a very important bearing, not only on the'future of tho world's food supply (regarding which thoro wore many somi-sciontino searri » vee ago)" but on the future distribution of population and political powti. .»u.; British Empire, with its vast cold areas in Canada, end still Vaster dry areas in Australia and South Africa, is more interested in them than any other State or union of States, and has now a rapidly-improving prospect of turning to valuable account even those portions of its inheritance which looked formerly least promising.—Daily Chronicle. Particulars of an interview in England with Dr. Macdonald, of the South African Agricultural Department, havo boon communicated to tho Department of External Affairs. Dr. Macdonald was ono of tho first to encourage dry farming, which has completely revolutionised tho agricultural industry in South Africa. “Before tho Government started experimental dry-land stations it was widely behoved,” says Dr. Macdonald, “that farming was only possible beside the water furrow. This meant a few irrigated patches of land, and the rest of tho country a desort. But we havo changed all that. In each of tho four provinces and in Rhodesia thousands of acres of dry land, which were once considered valueless, are now being ploughed up and planted, and aro yielding excellent crops. America has grown wheat on an Sin. rainfall, Australia has grown wheat on a Sin. rainfall, hut wa in South Africa have grown a rainless wheat. That is to say, that during the past season, at Lichtenburg, which >» situated in the dry zone of tho Transvaal, wo have grown wheat without a single drop of rain falling upon it from, seed-time until harvest. This is tho Durum wheat Apulia, which we originally introduced from the dry belt of Italy. Our success has been due to tho use of what we terra ‘moisture-saving fallows.’ Tie groat problem of South African agriculture is not the problem of fertility; it is the problem of the conservation of moisture. Me havo now solved that problem and made possible the immediate settlement of our dry or si id lands.”