The Brattleboro daily reformer. (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1913-1955, 1914-08-08
University Professor Predicts
PedigreGd Crops.
TO Be ONLY KIND, He SAYS.
Foresees the Time When the Ancestry
Be Subjected to Careful Inquiry.
Plant Breeding as an Insurance
Against Periods of Drought.

The aristocratic string bean, the blue
blooded onion, the naughty rhubarb
plant of high lineage and the snobbish
squash, which grows on a vine, but
which, nevertheless, has a family tree
these and other social lights of the
vegetable Four Hundred will freeze
the high cost of living ogre by their
naughty stares.
Figuratively and in brief, this is the
economic idea presented by Professor
John NJ. Coulter, head of the depart
ment of botany at the University of
Chicago, who gave lecture in Mandel
hall, entitled The New Attack ON the
Problem of Food Supply" Pedigree
culture or plant breeding, according
to Professor Coulter, will relieve the
worlds population of the fear of short
age in the food supply for many gen
erations to come.
Will Seek Pedisreed Vegetables.
His lecture wrought in the minds of
auditors, says the Chicago News, the
vision of grocery stores of the future,
where every slanting tray of fresh
vegetables would bear its tagged pedi-
gree and housewives might demand
to know the ancestry of pumpkin or
a pineapple and skeptically examine
nervous turnip, not for its jacket, but
for its coat of arms.
THE general purpose of plant breed
| ing is to improve the old races and to
| produce new ones,' said Professor
| Coulter. The old method has been
| that known as mass selection. This
1 familiar method consists in selecting
! the best individuals from a crop, rails
/ ing new crop from them, making
another selection and so on from gen
/ Grafton to generation until the desired
/ improvement has been obtained. 1t is
/ evident that this method, since it deals
with numerous individuals, secures
only q high average and does not Sc
cure the best that is in sight.
THE new method of pedigree Gull
ture was started upon large expert
/ mental scale near the beginning of this
| century at the famous Swedish expert
! ment station at Svalof. Instead of Sc
lecting large numbers of individuals a
| single most desirable individual was
selected and pedigreed. AS a conse-
quence, instead of submerging numer-
Gus individual peculiarities into Il gen
eral average, the particular advantages
of individuals We're preserved, and
very many desirable races of crop
plants We're secured.
Insurance Against Droughts.
Pedigree culture has also succeeded
in securing drought resistant races of
our most important crops, and the
method can be extended to include all
of our crops. This will mean insur-
ance against drought in regions where
crops are now cultivated and also the
extension of such crops into the arid
regions.
The same method has also secured
disease resistant races, SO that the an
nual destruction wrought by diseases
of plants can be eliminated.
''All this does not mean that mass
selection is an abandoned method. 1t
simply means that pedigree culture
supplements 1t in a most efficient way.
IF to these new methods of plant
r breeding there be added the modern
A methods of handling the soil, so that
V plants of possible maximum yield in
each region can be made actually to
r produce the maximum yield, the result
ing increase will ba enormous -