. Bulletin of the Department of Agriculture. Agriculture; Agriculture. BULLETIN OF THE WiffiNlOFAfflOJIl No. 137 Contribution from the Bureau of Plant Industry, Wm. A. Taylor, Chief October 16, 1914. (PROFESSIONAL PAPER.) SOME DISTINCTIONS IN OUR CULTIVATED BARLEYS WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR USE IN PLANT BREEDING. By Harry V. Harlan, Agronomist in Charge of Barley Investigations, Office of Cereal Investigations. INTRODUCTION. When the writer began active operations in barley breeding in 1909, the intelligent selection of mother plants was found to be very difficult because of the lack of suf
. Bulletin of the Department of Agriculture. Agriculture; Agriculture. BULLETIN OF THE WiffiNlOFAfflOJIl No. 137 Contribution from the Bureau of Plant Industry, Wm. A. Taylor, Chief October 16, 1914. (PROFESSIONAL PAPER.) SOME DISTINCTIONS IN OUR CULTIVATED BARLEYS WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR USE IN PLANT BREEDING. By Harry V. Harlan, Agronomist in Charge of Barley Investigations, Office of Cereal Investigations. INTRODUCTION. When the writer began active operations in barley breeding in 1909, the intelligent selection of mother plants was found to be very difficult because of the lack of sufficient information to enable minor variations to be recognized and interpreted. European breeders had subjected the taxonomic details to a most exacting scrutiny, but their results were not immediately useful. It was necessary to confirm the European findings, for a character found stable there could not be considered stable under the widely varying climatic conditions of America until it had been so proved. Again, the European authorities were far from united. There was not even a broad taxonomic char- acter whose stability had not been questioned at one time or another, and often by the highest authorities in barley classification. More- over, even if the groundwork could have been adopted entire, the more or less established taxonomic characters are only the beginning of the problem. Breeding must take" note of characters that are trivial in taxonomy. The intangible must be analyzed and made to serve, as well as the tangible. Even the very plausible idea of adopting European methods and importing improved European stocks was only partially successful. Conditions in America dinWin one vital particular from conditions in Europe. On the Continent and in Great Britain barley has been cultivated for centuries, and it is therefore practically indigenous. Each geographical locality has, through long periods of time, been provided by natural selection and acclimatization with
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