INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON PLANT BREEDING AND 



HYBRIDIZATION. 



Walter H. Evans, Ph. D. 

 Office of Experiment Stations. 



An international conference on plant breeding and hybridization was 

 held in New York City, September 30 to October 2, 1902, under the 

 auspices of the Horticultural Society of New York, with James Wood 

 as president and Leonard Barron secretar}-. About 80 delegates were 

 present, representing different parts of the United States, Canada, 

 England, West Indies, etc. A programme of more than 50 papers was 

 presented, a number being sent from German}", Austria, France, Hol- 

 land, and England. All of the papers are to be published in full in 

 the proceedings of the New York Horticultural Societ}", which it is 

 hoped will appear early in the coming year. A brief account is here 

 given of a number of papers which were presented at the conference. 



Prof. W. Bateson, of Cambridge University, England, considered the 

 Practical Aspects of the New Discoveiies in Heredity. He briefly 

 reviewed Mendel's law of heredity, and pointed out some of the great 

 advances which have been made since the enunciation of that law. In 

 general it was stated that while great differences may exist in plants 

 and animals, hybrids in their first generation represent the characters 

 of one parent and not of ])oth. The author believed that the time 

 would soon come when the fundamental principles of plant and animal 

 breeding would be known, so that the breeder would be able to con- 

 trol his work instead of depending upon chance results. For the 

 practical man it is impossible to always determine the characters which 

 exist in the parent plants. As an example, it is cited that green peas 

 may be due to the union of 2 green varieties, of yellow and green 

 varieties, or of 2 yellows, all of which tends to complicate the special 

 hereditar}^ characteristics. The frequent occurrence of bearded wheats 

 in plats of beardless varieties was mentioned, and their presence was 

 attributed to the probable fact that the beardless variety had been devel- 

 oped from a bearded form, the plants still containing some of the germ 

 cells of the bearded ancestors. The predominance of the recessive germs 

 resulted in the appearance of bearded forms, and the presence and 

 influence of recessive germs can be eliminated only gradually. Species, 

 according to the author, are not to be considered necessarily fixed or 

 of long duration. Crosses or, as the author called them, heterozygote 

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