INSTITUTE AND COLLEGE, PUSA, FOR 191243. 3? 



on the part of the local trade for this tobacco when grown 

 for cigarettes and at present the Company can to all intents 

 and purposes make its own terms. This year a good 

 deal of seed of this kind has been distributed not only to 

 planters in Bihar, but also to Government farms in the 

 Central Provinces and in the United Provinces. 



Experience in tobacco growing in Bihar discloses the 

 fact that every year the growers suffer a large amount of 

 loss of crop and waste a good deal of labour. Both can be 

 avoided. These losses are due to the primitive methods of 

 growing the seedlings, to the frequent loss of the majority 

 of the first sowings and to numerous casualties after trans- 

 planting, resulting in a very uneven crop. Experiments 

 were made during the past year with a view to remedy this 

 state of affairs. The seed beds were partially sterilized by 

 making fires on the surface before sowing and also by heat- 

 ing the upper soil in pans. The results were exceedingly 

 promising — the seedlings on the partially sterilized beds 

 were much stronger than the rest and were ready for trans- 

 planting about a week before the others. These experi- 

 ments are being extended and other methods of partial 

 sterilization such as steaming are being tried. 



A paper dealing with the results obtained on the in- 

 heritance of characters in this crop has been written by the 

 Personal Assistant. This work is of interest from several 

 aspects. It was undertaken with a view of obtaining some 

 general idea of the best method of attacking the problem of 

 the improvement of the quality of the Bihar tobaccos — more 

 particularly from the cigarette tobacco standpoint. From 

 the practical point of view the possibilities of obtaining 

 better tobaccos by breeding have been shown to be certain, 

 and several promising sorts have been isolated during the 

 progress of the work. From the scientific aspect it has 

 been shown that, provided proper precautions are taken, the 

 inheritance of quantitative characters, such as those relat- 

 ing to the size and shape of a tobacco leaf, follows the Men- 

 delian scheme. In this paper the results obtained on the 

 inheritance of the factors concerned in the size and shape 



