EXPERIMENT STATION REPORTS. 



237 



ALFALFA BREEDING. 



Since the last report a new nursery including 11,400 individuals lia:^ 

 been set out and it would appear that considerable improvement has 

 been made since the last generation. 



We now have not simply a Hardigan alfalfa, but a large number of 

 strains of Hardigan that appear just as different from one another as 

 the strains of alfalfa obtained from other sources differ from one an- 

 other. 



A large group of new strains come from Siberian sources. They may 

 be expected to more winter-hardy. When we received the original lot 

 of seed from which these lines come, it was planted in the 191G nursery. 

 Those plants showed great variability in erectness, color of blossoms, 

 and most everything that would characterize differences in alfalfa. 

 However, Siberian plants of the 191G nursery were very poor seed pro- 

 ducers. Some seed was saved from the row, however, and this was 

 planted in the 1918 nursery where we found a few plants with a rea- 

 sonable good seed production. These strains were again selected for the 

 1920 nursery where they showed great desirability from the standpoint 

 of commercial alfalfa. In the 1922 nursery most of these strains are 

 quite erect, have unusually low crowns, and seem to be high producers 

 of hay. 



The segregation of the color of the flower of the Siberian lot of alfalfa 

 enticed Mr. B. B. Robinson to attempt a study of the inheritance in 

 alfalfa as a master's thesis, and for that purpose he set out approximately 

 ten thousand individual plants in the spring of 1923. 



At the present writing it would seem that there are a number of 

 strains of alfalfa in the nursery that would be even more desirable com- 

 mercial varieties than the Harcligan now in the hands of farmers. These 

 are strains coming from Hardigan after passing through three more 

 generations of individual plants. As soon as the problem of increasing 



