Duane Bozarth wrote:

That seems almost incomprehensible that there aren't Ag Departments in
at least some of the major Universities, regardless of where they are
physically situated. Where are the Vet schools, the Animal Husbandry
programs, the Ag Engineers, Milling and Grain experts trained?

Well, Vet science was done at second tier places for a long time,
University of Queensland had vet science and a cat and dog hospital. Ag
engineering was pretty much all imported from the UK, milling and grain
was certificate level stuff run out of the TAFE/Ag College layer.

I seem to recall that most Vets had a certificate (like a trade
qualification) until well within my lifetime.

Universities have acquired big Ag Science areas at remote campuses in
the last 10 years or so of forced amalgamations.

There are of course, commercially developed varieties but most US-grown
varieties are developed by the various University and Grower-sponsored
research organizations. Example facilities in Kansas at Kansas State
University include

http://www.k-state.edu/wgrc/
http://www.k-state.edu/igp/
http://www.k-state.edu/igrow/

DPI handled stuff "in house" until it was gutted about 10 years ago.

Dad did a sponsored Farm Tour to Au and NZ a number of years ago under
aegis of US Dept of Ag but other than his tales of visiting and staying
w/ various producers around and meetings w/ Wheat Board (or whatever it
was called specifically) and other gov't officialdom I don't recall what
they saw for the research end.

The Wheat Board was a "single desk" export co-op. The US-Australia FTA
has pretty much gutted it.

Here we go, a traditional variety, 2m (6ft) and a modern hybrid 60cm (2ft).

That's going far farther back than what I would consider
"traditional"...

There's not been much of that type grown in really large quantities for
at least a 100 years, at least in the US. I was coming from the frame
of reference of when wheat was introduced as a widespread grain crop in
the US midwest in the mid-1800s which was primarily w/ the introduction
here of hard red winter wheat, specifically Turkey Red.

Ah, we've been growing things like Durum wheat here. Queenlands
wheatbelt is in warm temperate and subtropical climates.

The Duram wheats are grown farther north and west in the US from where
we are located here.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/e...ish_746022.htm

Pictures of horsedrawn harvesters here show wheat tended to be about 1m
tall, definitely over waist height, as opposed to barely knee high for
the current varieties I see in paddocks by the hyway.

I wouldn't like wheat quite that short for the reasons stated
before--would force one to run the combine header nearly on the ground
which makes for picking up lots of dirt and wear on the lower carriage
in order to not miss the shorter than average heads.

Our combines have been evolving pretty fast.

I still think regarding your point regarding the total biomass per acre
that the modern planting density compared to such hand sown fields of
the reference time frame when such super-tall varieties were predominant
will counteract a large amount of the difference in total plant volume.

The modern varieties put biomass into leaf formation and grain, little
stalk, suspect they are two to three times the mass per plant of the
earlier varities. Then there are forage crops, which are almost all leaf.

....Brock.