Excerpt from How to Increase the Yield of Wheat in California

Fig. 1.4birdseye View of California Cereal Station, Sacramento Valley.

Fig. 2. - Genera1 view of grain plats on the Tulare Station, 1908.

The investigations covered by this report are in general based. Upon results and observations covering a long period. For a limited time a portion of the work was conducted in co-operation with the Bureau of Plant Industry of the United States Department of Agriculture.

Both the field and laboratory investigations have covered a wide range. They embrace the relative value of deep vs. Shallow plowing, early vs. Late seeding, drill vs. Broadcast seeding, trials with fertil izers, the effect of certain rotation schemes, the improvement of the soil through green-manuring, moisture conservation, the treatment of. Grain for the prevention of smut, the value of exchanging seed, clean ing the land from weeds both by cultural methods and the use of chemical sprays, and finally, variety trials and the development of better types of grain than those commonly grown. In the study of the general question of environmental influence upon the quality of wheat, and also the selection work involving an increase of the gluten content, there has of course been a large amount of chemical work required. Questions involved along these lines have been the influence upon the gluten content of the length of the growing period, of the time of harvest, of the time of seeding, of the time the wheat plant receives its moisture, the influence of sunshine and of the composition of the soil. The environmental question as affecting the gluten content will be the theme of a separate report.

In this report an effort has been made to so correlate the cultural results and observations that they may be of immediate benefit to the California grain growers, in effecting improvement in soil fertility, increasing the yield of grain, and. Improving the milling quality of the grain produced.

It should be said that these results should be considered as simply the foundation for more extensive work. The element of time is an all-essential one for the solution of such problems as these. This would be true even though the problem was merely the develop ment of grain giving higher yields, but, with the introduction of the problem of increasing the gluten content, the element of time is of even greater importance.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.