DOES THE FARMER GET PURE SEEDS?* 



During the last six months of 1912 a seed inspection 



Much poor law was in force in New York State, and the examina- 



seed on tions of samples, made at the Station under the 



market. law and otherwise, plainly show that some such 



inspection is necessary. Only 125 official samples 



were examined, but of these one-fifth were below the standard set 



by the law. This standard is by no means high, either; for the law 



merely requires that the presence in agricultural seeds of more 



than three per ct. of foul or foreign seeds must be plainly indicated 



by a label on the seed package. Of the ordinary weed seeds found 



in the inspection, three per ct. by count would involve the sowing 



of 125,000 weed seeds in the 20 pounds of alfalfa seed used on an 



acre, or three weeds for every square foot of land. If considerable 



of this impurity chanced to be dodder seed the result would be 



serious; for the grower' of alfalfa should hesitate to sow even one 



seed to the acre of this pest. This official inspection may be made 



very helpful, as a check upon seed dealers, but it would not be safe 



for growers to accept without personal or expert examination seeds 



even well within the limit of the law, if they wish to avoid weed 



seeds. 



Beside the official samples, the Station also examined, during 1912, 

 more than 1,100 samples of seeds sent in by correspondents and 

 found some marked cases of adulteration. Of 621 samples of alfalfa, 

 13 contained sand, crushed rock, broken seed, yellow trefoil or 

 similar undesirable material in quantities beyond what would be 

 present naturally. Of the 14 samples of hairy vetch examined, 12 

 contained seeds of other vetches as an adulterant, notably spring 

 vetch which can not replace the winter vetch as a cover crop. Such 

 adulteration may account for many of the failures of this crop 

 reported. The percentages of dodder-infested samples were also 

 increased over those found in 1911, as 13 per ct. of the alfalfa samples 



* Eeprint of Popular Edition of Bulletin No. 362; see p. 153 for Bulletin. 



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