"Rainless Wheat."

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 17 April 1914, Page 2

"Rainless Wheat."

Modern research, by selecting specialised strains of wheat, and breeding them as carefully as simpler j ages bred cattle, has naturalised the i plant in nearly every climate. ! Two main foes have had to be j overcome—cold and drought. The success with which Canada has developed a wheat that will stand i cold is well known. Every year sees the wheatfields of the Dominion pushing nearer to the Arctic circle, ; and vast areas are now under wheat i cultivation which thirty years ago were of no interest to anybody but trappers and lumbermen. Not so' much has been heard of Ihe not less remarkable, work—pioneered mainly in the arid American States which lie just east of the' Rockies, and are cut off by them from the Pacific rainfall— -whose object has been to grow .wheat with« j 1 out rain. _ I : The success obtained there has' i been repeated in South , .Africa by ! experts employed under tin; Lniou ; Government ; and now Mr. "Mac(lonaid, who has been in charge of this work, reports the successful gpowl h in the Transvaal of a fVop of .a i::-;o- ! lutely '■rainless" -wheat —whr-at. that ! is, grow'n on unirrig'n t e.l' soil with- i out a drop of rain from sowing I to harvesting—. j