Greene County herald. (Leakesville, Miss.) 1898-current, 1901-12-13
THE BREEDING or PLANTS.
A FASCINATING STORY AND AN
ENCHANTING PAS TIME.
How Fields OF Corn Have Been Made to
Largely Increase Their YieId-F oreign
Experience Will Receive More Atten'
ton in the Future.

oIlllC importance, tIle Dreeulng OF plants
is fascinating study and most en-
chanting pastmc to those interested in
the welfare of the work The Depart
ment of Agriculture has issued a bulletin
on the subject which says: 1T is one OF
those subjects in which students like to
specialize.
In looking toward the future, it seems
probable that plant breeding will receive
far more attention than heretofore. In
European countries much more attention
is given to the improvement of plaMss
than in America. In two towns i'll Ger
many there are nearly thirty large seed
firms, with an aggregate capital invest
iiieht probably FIVE times as great as the
capital of the general seed firms of Am
erica. In that Country owners of large
farms breed and raise seeds of wheat
oats, rye, sugar beets, potatoes and other
Ierops. They get better profits from this
work and they build on their farms
chemical and seed laboratories where the
seed selection is done Systematically
Those farmers to whom they supply seed
which will make their yields larger are
also benefited -
Tn England the average yield of whea,
is over thirty bushels per acre, while in
the Unite States it is below fifteen
bushels. This difference is in part due
to the better preparation of soil and the
moister climate; but doubtless it is also
due in part to the selection and breeding
of wheat during a much longer period
than has passed since wheat was first
grown in this new country.
Breeding plants, since the literature
on the subject is growing in volume
gives opportunity for wide study. Es-
pecially as an art does the breeding OF
plants give the opportunity for the de-
velopment of skill of high order.
The breeders of plants, as we'll as the
breeders of animals, need to make more
of study OF records, of relationships;
in word, design, collect and study pedi-
grees of the plants. and animals with
which they deal
In America Indian corn has been
bred for numerous conditions, Early
large-yieldng dent varieties have finally
been bred for southern Minnesota and
other northern States.
"What farmer would think of return
ing to the smaller ears of fifty or one
hundred years ago? Yet it is quite pos
sible in another half century, by more
carefully breeding and with greater at
tention to the composition and quality
OF Our corn, to make as important i'm
provements as have been made in the
past 1t is probably safe to say that the
farmers, by adding rs per cent. more to
the care and labor of rotating crops.
manuring the soil and cultivating the
corn, could secure rs per cent. larger
yields. And it is probably just as safe
to say that if one-tenth of I per cent
of the corn crops value were devoted by
the government to breeding this plant SO
as to better adapt it to each locality, 10
per cent more could be added to the
yield. While better farming and better
cultivation are ultimately the more i'm
portant in the aggregate, plant breeding
is relatively more important until our
crops are brought up more nearly to
their possible maximum of yield.
"Our ten leading field crop, in the
United States yield an annual income
which is valued on the farm at something
like $4,000, 100000. No man who has
earnestly and intelligenty tried to in
crease the yields of any one of these
crops will doubt the assertion that by
breeding alone, other conditions remain
ing the same, an average increase of s
per cent. could be added to the yields
Of these ten crops in twenty years by
line of thorough experimentation.
Prices remaining the same, this would
add $1oo,ooo,ooo annually to the aggre-
gate valuation of these crops; or, in
twenty succeeding years, $4,000 ooo, 900
If to the increase in value of our princi-
pal field crops are added the increase in
values of orchard, garden, greenhouse
and forest crops, we will have much
greater aggregate gain. All these crops
are capable of improvement by breed
ing, the same as corn and wheat, and the
general principles to be followed are the
same throughout. In many of the flower
and vegetable crops changes have already
been produced by breeding that are far
greater than the anticipated changes in
the yields of corn and wheat
In the case of sugar bects, for ex-
ample, the percentage of sugar in the
Juice Of the roots has been increased
probably 100 per cent. by rigid scientific
methods practiced on large and ex-
pensive scale by European seed growers
This work, started by Vilmorin OF
France, has made possible large in
dustry, profitable to the farmers and to
manufacturers and has resulted in much
cheaper sugar for the entire world. Here.
as in other lines of breeding, the princi-
pies and practice are comparatively
simple and easily mastered. Remove it
from the domain of abstruse reasoning,
where some teachers Of heredity place
it, and plant improvement becomes a
practical business proposition, an i'm
portant affair Of state" -Washineton