Methods of Breeding Oats 



1797 



and a white oat and produce a black oat as the immediate result of the 

 cross, which in turn breaks up according to Mendel's law, giving both 

 black and white oats in the following year. Other characters have been 

 studied, but these are sufficient to indicate how some characters in oats 

 behave through hybridization. 



Another objection to hybridization as a method of improvement is 

 the fact that, since hybrids do segregate according to Mendel's law, the 

 hybrids must be grown for two or three years before it can be known 

 which will breed true. If the grower had practiced selection it would 

 have been possible to grow several hundred selections, and the chances 

 for obtaining a good-yielding type would have been much better. 



Both these methods, selection and hybridization, seem to require so 

 much detail that the question will be raised immediately as to whether 

 this will pay. Attention is directed to some of the results that have been 

 obtained by the Department of Plant-breeding in the improvement of 

 oats during the last few years. New strains of oats obtained both through 

 selection and through hybridization have been grown on the experiment 

 station farm and have been carefully compared with many commercial 

 varieties. The following table shows some of the results: 



TABLE 3. 



Showing Comparative Yields of Selections and Hybrids, and the 

 Commercial Varieties from Which They were Obtained 



Variety or strain 



Yield in bushels per acre 



Gain 



Welcome variety 



123-5. selection from Welcome variety 



Sixty Day variety 



Selection from Sixty Day variety 



Selection from Sixty Day variety 



Sixty Day variety 



Burt variety 



Average of Sixty Day and Burt 



Burt x Sixty Day 



14-3 



11. 9 

 9.6 



hi 



* Three-years average. 



It will be seen that the Welcome selection shows a gain of 14.3 bushels 

 per acre over the variety. Two selections from the Sixty Day variety 

 made gains of 11.9 and 9.6 bushels per acre, respectively, over the yield 

 of the variety. The average yield for the Burt and Sixty Day varieties 

 was 46.6 bushels, while the hybrid between the two yielded 57.7 bushels 

 giving a gain of 1 1 . 1 bushels per acre in favor of the hybrid. 

 123 



