SEVERANCE ON CROP IMPROVEMENT. «« 



expei'iinont liavo shown thai tlio siiinllost, the lightest, and the most 

 imiiiature seed «;eiieiall.v })r(>(lii(<'s I he poorest yield and quality of grain. 

 In recoguition of this fact some enterprising farmers have adopted the 

 plan of selecting the best patch of grain in their fields for seed, and 

 cleaning the same free from all small, light, and immature seed ^-o far as 

 it can be done with a mill. Where this is jtractieed there is no complaint 

 of running out of varieties. At the Indiana Station Fultz, Michigan 

 Amber, and Velvet Chaff wheats grown eleven years without change of 

 seed showed much larger yields the eleventh year than they did the first. 

 Professor Latta, in concluding the report of the work, says, "It is high 

 time that farmers every where should abandon the notion that wheat 

 will run out." 



Selecting the best spot in the field insures a selection of seed from 

 l>lants that have made the most healthy and vigorous growth and the 

 thorough cleaning eliminates largely the seeds from the weakly and light 

 yielding plants, though not entirely. Simply making a very thorough 

 cleaning of the seed taken from the bin will often work a great improve- 

 ment. An interesting instance is cited in Bulletin 15; Minnesota, in 

 which Judge Hall, a flour mill owner of Hudson, Wisconsin, noting that 

 wheat was very poor in his vicinity and had been for years, offered to 

 clean the farmers' seed free of charge. Most of the farmers accepted the 

 offer. He cleand free from dirt, weed seeds, and light and immature 

 grains and soon increased the yield from below fifteen bushels per acre 

 to over twenty-five bushels per acre with a corresponding increase in 

 quality. 



There are some difficulties in the way of improvement of our crops by 

 careful selection. In the first place, there are some important questions 

 bearing on this subject that do not seem to be definitely settled by our 

 experiment station workers. For example, workers at different stations 

 do not seem to arrive at the same conclusions regarding seed exchange. 

 Experiments at Minnesota seem to indicate that exchange of seed is 

 beneficial, while experiments at North Dakota and Indiana seem to in- 

 dicate as clearly that home grown seed will usually give better results 

 than seed from some other locality. Evidently seed exchange would do 

 away with the opportunity to improve a strain by selection. Experi- 

 ments have shown great possibilities for improvement by selection. If 

 experiments will also show great possibilities for improvement by seed 

 exchange which method shall we choose for it is evident that the one 

 practice precludes the other. I, personally, would like to see this prob- 

 lem investigated more thoroughly by several stations. 



Another problem that must be thoroughly understood before we can 

 most intelligently set about improvement is the compatibility or incom- 

 patibility of characters. If we wish to promote prolificacy to the highest 

 point, what will be the effect on quality of product or on hardiness ; if we 

 wish to intensify a certain quality, at the expense of what other char- 

 acter must it be done, to what extent may all desirable characters be 

 combined? The incompatibility of certain characters is now pretty well 

 understood, as great yield and extreme earliness, finest quality and 

 greatest yield, etc., but there are still many problems to be solved along 

 this line. 



After all these problems are solved by scientific investigators, it still 

 remains to disseminate a knowledge of the necessary truths, and induce 

 the commercial producers to practice the principles that science teaches 



