146 



THE AGKICULTURAL NEWS. 



Mav 18. 1918. 



-quite ioiipossible to guarantee the propagation ot any 

 desirable variety by seed, as thero are no pure strains 

 which can be depended upon to breed true. All sorts 

 of varieties may arise from seed of a moat desirable 

 type of tree, the pods and beans of which may show 

 characteristics in the next generation differing in the 

 most essential respects. Some of them might be taken 

 to be almost pure Criollo, others various types of 

 Forastero. and still others resemblinc^ low-bred Cala- 

 bacillo. It would appear therefore that the effort to 

 attain uniformity of product in cacao by seedling propa- 

 gation must necessarily result at the best in very 

 partial and by no means permanent success. 



Another method which was forcibly advocated by 

 the late Mr. Hart of Trinidad in his book, Cacao, Its 

 Cultivation and Caring, iahy employment of grafting 

 and budding He truly remarks that: — 



The difference which an "even sample" would 

 make to the seller is obvious. We know that it can 

 •only be obtained by means of grafting and budding 

 from selected trees, or, as some would call it, by 

 vegetative reproduction, in contradistinction to .seminal 

 Reproduction. It is clear that once a tree has been 

 selected .and largely propagated by grafting because 



• of its possession of superlative «|ualities, the produce 



• of those trees must be of an even character, and that, 

 taken year by year, the crop will vary but very little in 

 general ijuality. By using the process of grafting, the 

 planter will be able to secure trees of one habit, pods 

 ■of one colour, and beans of the very best quality. Such 

 beans, when cured, would be immensely superior to any 

 ■.produce harvested from seedling trees. To adopt 

 grafting as a regular practice upon a cacao (^state 

 would be to adopt a method the benefit of which has 

 been proved ages ago to the agricultural and horticul- 

 tural world.' 



It is thus evident that by selecting trees produc- 

 ing the type of bean which the planter has determined 

 npon he can by degrees bring his plantation up to a per- 

 fectly uniform .standard as to the beans proiluced by the 

 trees, by resorting to Budding or grafting in the 

 replacing of the undesirable trees eliminated. 



Valuable work has been done in o.xperimen- 

 tation on budding and grafting cacao by Mr. J. Jones, 

 Agricultural Superintendent, Pominica. In 1908 

 be reaiJ a paper at the West Indian Agricul- 

 tural Conference, held in Barbados, on the successful 

 results he ha^l obtained in Dominica in grafting cacao 



by thi- approach method. This paper wns published 

 in the West Indian Bulletin, Vol. VIII. In the 

 Annual Report on the Agricultural Department, 

 Dominica, 191S-14, Mr. .Tones gave an account — 

 reprinted in the West Indian Bulletin, Vol. XIV — 

 of further successful experiments in budding cacao by 

 various methods. He states in this report that he 

 obtained the greatest percentage of successes by 

 employing the well-known .system of patch budding. 

 Reference to these papers will repay any cacao planter 

 who cares to try the methods described, which, it 

 may be said, Mr. Hart in his book declared to be by 

 no means difficult to carry out. 



In order, however, to guarantee his product 

 to the manufacturers the planter will have to be 

 careful in the first place to pick only really ripe pods, 

 and also to submit the beans to one uniform process 

 of drying and sweating. He may then confidently 

 expect that he will obtain the best market price for 

 his dependable article. In every kind of merchandise 

 the market is always commanded by standard products. 



In viewing the mixture of types of plants to 

 be met with on a cacao estate, one is drawn to consider 

 whether there may not be the possibility of fixing 

 pure strains from field selections or after scientific 

 crossing on Mendelian lines, as has been done, for 

 instance, in the case of cotton. This re<juires the 

 attention of special investigators, and considerable 

 patience, in order to be sure of the accuracy of the 

 results obtained. Unfortunately for impatient men, cacao 

 usually takes four to five years to begin bearing, so that 

 it might i-e<)uire ten, fifteen or twenty years fnr a suffi- 

 cient number of generations to be studied in order that 

 the results might be definitely considered as trustworthy. 

 It may not be too much to hope, however, that work 

 on these lines may be provided for by some central 

 research committee of similar constitution to that 

 now concerned with cotton. It is probably the real 

 solution of the <juestion how to obtain and preserve 

 uniformity iii the production of cacao. 



Although stre.ss has l)cen laid in the foregoing 

 remarks upon the \ ital necessity of securing uniformity 

 in the (juality of the yield of cacao plantations, the 

 ijuestion of obtaining greater ijuantity per acre is also of 

 importance. The two questions by no means contlicl. 

 As in the matter of quality there is an extraordinary 

 difference at prost-iit in the product of cacao trees 

 planted in the same field, so also there is to be noted 

 a very great difference in the amount of yield compar- 

 ing tree with tree. In this direction there is the .same 



