Com Growers' Association. 303 



ject of com. It is wonderful and a very interesting field of work, 

 and I believe we are going to do more for agriculture in this line of 

 crop breeding in the next twenty years than we can imagine right 

 now. There is a great opportunity to breed better seed by im- 

 proving the best varieties we already have, by breeding pure strains, 

 or new varieties, as we may call them, though practically they are 

 just strains of the sorts we are growing today. I will not go into 

 further detail on this subject of crop breeding, because it will be 

 further discussed in talks following this. 



• 



VITALITY OF SEED. 



It is necessary that the seed which we plant be not only well 

 bred but strong in vitality. The seed which is nicest in appearance 

 may not necessarily be the strongest in vitality. We have found 

 with com that it is not always possible to judge an ear as to its vital- 

 ity. A good judge may make a fair guess. He would discard ears 

 which contained molded, decayed or immature kernels. He would 

 suspect the vitality of certain ears of com if the kernels had broken 

 tips or a dull color, and sometimes he would be correct. But at the 

 Kansas Station I have picked out from a crop of twenty acres of 

 corn fifty of the best ears the eye could select and tested them sep- 

 arately as to germination, and found that the kernels would not all 

 germinate. There seems to be in an ear of corn an inherent quality 

 which has something to do with its vitality and its reproductive- 

 ness, and the only safe way to determine whether corn is good seed 

 com or not is to test the germination of the kernels of every ear be- 

 fore planting. That looks like an awful big job to Kansas farmers, 

 and I am almost afraid to present it to them yet, and I want to get 

 them started by persuading them to test simply the ears they intend 

 to use in their seed plats. But when we find that in 100 ears of well- 

 selected seed corn a half dozen or more ears may be discovered by 

 the germination test whose kernels will not sprout, it is evident 

 that each individual ear should be tested and proven good before 

 planting, in order to secure a perfect stand. This is one of the 

 ways of getting a large crop — to have a perfect stand. 



With other kinds of grain I have not made experiments to test 

 this matter of germination, so far as the individual plant is con- 

 cerned. But with all kinds of grain it is safer to make a general 

 test of the germination before planting. This is not so necessary 

 with wheat, oats and barley, but especially important with the 

 smaller seeds, clover, alfalfa and grass seed?. It is a great risk to 

 plant grass seeds without first testing the germination. A simple 



