Page:Farmers' Bulletin, No. 1280.djvu/8

6 Turkey should not be grown in humid sections of the East or South or along the Pacific coast, as it is easily lodged and injured by excessive rainfall. The grain also becomes very starchy under these conditions.

From Turkey wheat is manufactured a flour of high bread-making quality. Turkey and Kharkof, the two standard but identical hard red winter wheats for flour making, are equal or superior to all other hard winter varieties in milling and baking quality.

Kharkof can not be distinguished from Turkey and should properly be considered as identical with that variety. One introduction of Kharkof contained about 80 per cent of plants having longer “beaks” (short beards on the outer chaff) than Turkey. Most of the Kharkof variety grown, however, is identical with Turkey in all observable characteristics.

Kharkof was first introduced into the United States from Starobielsk, Kharkof, Russia, in 1900, by Mark Alfred Carleton, of the United States Department of Agriculture. The Kharkof Government, where this wheat was obtained, is north of the section in which Turkey wheat was grown. It was thought, therefore, that Kharkof would be more winter hardy than Turkey. In the early experiments it gave better results than ordinary Turkey, but in recent years very little difference in hardiness or yield has been observed. Kharkof was quite widely distributed by the United States Department of Agriculture and several State agricultural experiment stations in the early years of the present century.

Kharkof is grown in the same areas as Turkey and frequently is not considered distinct or kept separate from that variety. This is especially true in Kansas, where Kharkof is grown to a considerable extent, but in Montana, where it probably is more widely grown than Turkey, its identity has been more carefully preserved.

Kharkof has yielded as well as Turkey in practically all sections where it has been grown. The average yields of the two varieties during a long period of years frequently are about the same. In the Great Plains area, however, Kharkof appears to give slightly higher yields than Turkey, but only in Montana are the differences significant. Outside of the Great Plains area the differences are negligible. In milling and baking quality the Kharkof and Turkey varieties are identical.

Iowa No. 404 can not be distinguished from Turkey and Kharkof. This is a selection from Turkey made at the Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station. It was first distributed from that station in 1913