Il6 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



or otherwise, comparison of the mother plants by means of the 

 average of their progeny, and improving them by continuous 

 selection. 



The Economic Importance of Plant Breeding. 



The economic results of the improvement of our field and 

 horticultural crops are already extremely large, and the possi- 

 bilities which have been opened up in the past few years are 

 hardly comprehensible. 



Professor Hayes, at the University of Minnesota, has in- 

 creased the yield of the best variety of wheat previously grown 

 in the state by twenty-five per cent. By ten years of careful 

 work an average yield of twenty-three bushels per acre has 

 been raised to twenty-eight bushels per acre. This improve- 

 ment of twenty-five per cent, in the matter of yield, if calculated 

 on the world's supply, would add six hundred and twenty-five 

 million bushels per year, or, at a selling price of eighty cents 

 per bushel, would add five hundred million dollars to the 

 world's wealth. If we should calculate this on the amount 

 grown in the United States alone, we could in a decade pay 

 the national debt. 



The corn crop of the United States is two billion bushels 

 per year, with an average of about twenty-five bushels per 

 acre, and there is no doubt but that there is a possibility that 

 the yield may be gradually increased through the means of 

 better yielding strains for many years to come, and no one 

 can yet predict the limit of such improvement. 



The improvement of the sugar beet has been going on 

 one hundred years, and in this time the sugar content has 

 been increased 125 per cent., resulting in profitable industries 

 for the growers and manufacturers, and in greatly decreased 

 prices of sugar for the entire world. *" 



No one who is at all familiar with what has been ac- 

 complished in a few years in this country and Europe will 

 doubt that there is a possibility of a five per cent, increase in 

 yield of all the leading crops of the United States within a 

 comparatively short time, say ten or twenty years, if money 

 were provided to carry on the work. A percentage increase 

 of even this amount would add to their value from one hundred 



