An account of an experiment to determine the heredity of early and late ripening in an oat cross

Abstract

1. Earliness and lateness are not instantaneous, sharply defined characters: they are spread over a period. 2. The ripening times of the parents used did not overlap. 3. Poor tillering power was characteristic of the early parent. 4. F1 plants more or less intermediate. 5. The F2 crop was harvested all at once. Hence no definite data were available. Evidence of early, late, and many intermediate forms, however, was visible. 6. Systematic, gradual harvesting of the F3 generation was undertaken, together with parent rows grown under exactly the same conditions, to determine the constitution of the individual F2 plants. 7. Analysis of results. Earliness is possibly a function of 3 factors. A type which iscomparatively early, in that its F3 period never extends into the period of the late parent, is segregated on a 1:3 basis. 8. Suggestions are made with regard to the improvement of early varieties.