THE FUNDAMENTALS OF CROP IMPROVEMENT. 7 



adapted to our climate, the other producing a fruit of little com- 

 mercial value. 



The great value of the kumquat for breeding purposes having been 

 brought out by these experiments, a thorough botanical survey of all 

 the wild relatives of our citrus fruits was undertaken in the hope of 

 finding other plants which, like the kumquat, would be of importance 

 to the breeder. The result of this botanical survey was most sur- 

 prising. It has brought to light a large number of wild relatives of 

 our common citrus fruits which have been completely ignored by 

 horticulturists and but little understood by botanists. 



Kecently attention has been directed to a desert kumquat growing 

 in the interior of Australia. This is the hardiest of all the evergreen 

 citrus fruits and yields in the wild state an edible fruit something 

 like a kumquat. This desert kumquat, in addition to the extreme 

 dormancy possessed by the ordinary kumquat, has also something of 

 the direct cold resistance of the trifoliate orange. Here, then, is ma- 

 terial of the very highest value for the plant breeder. Yet this desert 

 kumquat is a plant so insignificant in its wild state as to have been 

 completely ignored by the enterprising and progressive Australian 

 horticulturists and of so little interest to botanists that it has never 

 been correctly classified, has never been figured, and has been only 

 imperfectly described. Numerous other types of citrus fruit equally 

 striking as examples of breeding possibilities and botanical neglect 

 have come to light, but it would take too much space to enumerate 



them here. 



MORE EFFECTIVE PLANT BREEDING. 



A combination of this new kind of economic botany with crop 

 physiology would greatly increase the efficiency of the art of breed- 

 ing. I can do no better than compare the ordinary plant breeder 

 to the man who attempts to paint a picture with a few colors picked 

 up at random and the scientific plant breeder to the consummate 

 artist who paints a masterpiece having at his disposal all the tints 

 that art can offer. The really enlightened and efficient plant breeder 

 must know his materials and what they are capable of yielding. 



We must remember that it is unfair to expect the technical taxo- 

 nomic botanist to have any very keen interest in the obscure relatives 

 of our cultivated plants. Often the general relationships of these 

 plants are known, and it does not seem worth while to expend much 

 time or money in the attempt to secure" more complete material of 

 plants which promise no results of taxonomic importance. For the 

 purposes of effective plant breeding, however, these obscure wild rela- 

 tives, through some physiological peculiarity of insignificance to the 

 taxonomist, may be of vital importance in the work of improving 

 some great crop plant in the cultivation of which hundreds of thou- 



[Cir. 116] 



