Abstract
SIR ALBERT HUMPHRIES, chairman of the National Institute of Agricultural Botany, in the course of his address to the annual meeting of the Institute's fellows at Cambridge on July 21 showed how agricultural research helps the farmer to make good use of the wheat quota. The quantity of wheat grown in Great Britain has been steadily diminishing and the proportion used for poultry has increased, so that in the past season home-grown wheat represented only some seven per cent of the national grist. The wheat quota is likely to raise this figure considerably, and the quality of English wheat for bread-making may come into its own again. The Cambridge Plant Breeding Institute has produced, and the National Institute of Agricultural Botany is now testing, a variety of which the quality is markedly superior even to Yeoman. Yielding capacity is, however, of first importance, and there are often differences of up to 20 per cent between varieties. The Institute in 1930-1931 tested, by methods which can detect much smaller differences, some hundred varieties, of which twenty are new ones not yet on the market. Sir Albert Humphries urged that facts of this sort show the Institute to be working directly for the improvement of the farmer?s financial position.
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Research and the Wheat Quota. Nature 130, 163 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/130163c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/130163c0