MAINE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. I914. 1/ 



By the selection and isolation of such pure lines out of stand- 

 ard commercial varieties we have been able to secure new 

 varieties or strains which are far superior to any of the com- 

 mercial varieties so far tested. The question now arises, can 

 any improvement be made in these pure lines by further selec- 

 tion. 



The points in question can perhaps be made clearer by con- 

 sidering what constitutes a commercial variety. To the casual 

 observer a variety may appear to be breeding perfectly true and 

 all the plants may appear to be alike. However, if the plants 

 are examined carefully many differences will be found. Further, 

 if individual plants are selected and the seed of each grown in 

 separate rows it will be found that many of these rows differ 

 greatly in their yield, time of maturity, strength of straw, etc. 

 These differences are transmitted from one generation to the 

 next. Each plant which breeds differently from the others 

 belongs to a different pure line. A commercial variety then 

 consists of a mixture of a large number of pure lines which we 

 may designate by the letters, 



A, B, C, D, E, F, . . . etc. 

 If we select a single plant it will belong to one of these pure 

 lines, for example, C. If we multiply the seed of this plant we 

 may have finally a whole field, all the plants of which belong to 

 this pure line C. If we again select single plants from such a 

 field we still have only the same pure line. If we grow the seed 

 of such selected plants in separate rows there is little or no 

 difference between the rows. The question is, can we improve 

 this pure line C, by selecting year after year the best yielding 

 plants ? 



Experiments to test this question have been in progress for 

 the past four years. Twenty-eight pure lines coming frora 13 

 different commercial varieties have been used in this work. 

 The method has been to grow short rows of each pure line in the 

 oat garden at Highmoor Farm. All of the rows were grown 

 under as nearly uniform conditions as possible. Each plant 

 was then threshed separately and various data including the 

 height, number of culms, weight of plant, weight of straw and 

 weight of grain were recorded. For planting the next year, 

 individual plants showing the highest and lowest degrees of 

 a given character were chosen. The seed from each of these 



