12 PLANT BREEDING. 



the farmer has been al)le to choose the very best yielding plants out 

 of immense fields. Without fully recognizing tlie fact, the farmers 

 of America have been conducting with corn the most extensive breed- 

 ing experiment ever carried on. 



Corn being an open fertilized species, large numbers of new forms 

 have resulted from accidental hybrids between different varieties in 

 adjacent fields, thus forming many local varieties of this very iiitei- 

 esting plant, and building up the yield and quality of the corn crop 

 of America. 



If the corn crop of the United States were reduced to 80 j)er cent of 

 its present yield we would have 1,600,000,00.0 instead of 2,000,000,000 

 bushels, or an average of 20 instead of 25 bushels per acre. What 

 farmer would think of returning to the smaller ears of fifty or one 

 hundred years ago? Yet it is quite possible in another half century, 

 by more careful breeding and with greater attention to the composition 

 and quality of our corn, to make as imjiortant improvements as have 

 been made in the past. It is probably safe to say that the farmers, 

 by adding 25 per cent more to tlie care and lal)or of rotating crops, 

 manuring the soil, and cultivating the corn, could secure 25 per cent 

 larger yields. And it is probably just as safe to say that if one-tenth of 

 1 per cent of the corn crop's value were devoted by tlie Government to 

 breeding this plant so as to better adapt it to each locality, 10 perceiit 

 more coukl be added to the yield. Wliih- better farming and better 

 cultivation are ultimatelj^ the moi'e important in tlie aggregate, plant 

 breeding is relativelj' more important until our crops are brought up 

 more nearly to their possible maximum of jield. 



Our ten leading field crops in tlie United States yield an annual 

 income which is valued on the farm at something like !^2, 000, 000,000. 

 No man who has earnestly and intelligently tried to increase the 

 yields of any one of these crops will doubt the assertion that bj' breed- 

 ing alone, other conditions remaining the same, an average increase 

 of 5 per cent could be added to the jaelds of these ten crops in twenty 

 years by a line of thorough experimentation. Prices remaining the 

 same, this would add 1100,000,000 annually to the aggregate valuation 

 of these crops; or, in twenty succeeding j^ears, $2,000,000,000. If to 

 the increase in value of our principal field crops are added the increase 

 in values of orchard, garden, greenhouse, and forest crops, we will 

 have a much greater aggregate gain. All these crops are capable of 

 improvement bj^ breeding, the same as corn and wheat, and the gen- 

 eral principles to be followed are the same throughout. In manj- ol 

 the flower and vegetable crops changes have already been produced 

 bj^ breeding that are far greater than the anticipated changes in the 

 yields of corn and wheat. 



In the ease of sugar beets, for example, the percentage of sugar in 

 the juice of the roots has been increased probably 100 per cent by 

 rigid scientific methods practiced on a large and expensive scale by 



