12 EESULTS OF COTTON EXPERIMENTS IN 1911. 



PRESERVATION OF SUPERIOR VARIETIES BY SELECTION. 



One of the chief factors in the improvement of all agricultural 

 industries, the utilization of better varieties, is largely nullified by 

 the failure of the cotton-growing pubUc to understand and observe 

 the precautions that are needed to preserve the uniformity of im- 

 proved stocks. The breeding of a superior variety of cotton repre- 

 sents an improvement of the industry only to the extent that the 

 stock is preserved and continued in cultivation. With selection 

 neglected, the uniformity of a strain is soon lost, usually before its 

 agricultural value can be reahzed and even before it is brought into 

 general cultivation. Selection is quite as necessary for the preser- 

 vation of old varieties as for the development of new ones. Such 

 selection is quite distinct, both in object and method, from that 

 employed by a breeder in developing a new variety or in finding 

 superior individuals and comparing their progenies. The modern 

 school of biologists may be right in supposing that little or nothing 

 can be obtained in the way of further improvement after a definite 

 varietal type has been separated. But this has nothing to do with 

 the fact that continued selection is a necessity to keep any select 

 stock from losing its uniformity by crossing with degenerate muta- 

 tions that continue to appear, even in pure strains, from self-polli- 

 nated plants.^ 



Though it is of the highest importance with cotton to use select seed 

 in order to secure good yields and uniform fiber, the present system of 

 seed production is altogether inadequate and entails annual losses of 

 enormous proportions. To say that the .average yield could be 

 increased 10 per cent and the quality improved to a similar extent by 

 the use of better seed are conservative estimates amply justified by 

 many experiments in different parts of the cotton belt. Yet if these 

 factore of improvement could be applied to the whole cotton industry 

 of the United States their annual value would reach a very large figure. 



Owing to the relatively small number of seeds produced by the 

 individual plant and the relatively large number that have to be 

 planted, there is no prospect that the production of high-grade seed 

 can be centralized in the hands of commercial seed growers or dealers, 

 as with other crops. The great bulk of the crop will continue in the 

 future, as in the past, to be grown from seed raised on the same farm 

 or at least in the same community. Moreover, all the experiments 

 indicate that properly selected home-grown seed is likely to give better 

 results than any newly imported stock, even of a superior variety. 

 The production of local supplies of high-grade seed is one of the 

 fundamental objects of community organization. 



> Bain, S. M. A Cotton Variation with a Self-Fertilized Ancestry. American Breeders' Magazine, vol. 2, 

 No. 4, 1911, p. 272. 

 [Cir. 9(;j 



