GRAPE-BREEDING 281 



higher averages of worthy offspring than others. There is so 

 much difference in varieties in this respect that to discover 

 parents so endowed should be the first task of the grape-breeder. 

 Fortunately, considerable work has been done by several ex- 

 periment stations in breeding grapes, and their accumulated 

 knowledge, together with that from such workers as Rogers, 

 Ricketts, Campbell and ^Nlunson, furnishes beginners with 

 good starting points. There is no way possible of discovering 

 what the best progenitors are except by records of performance. 

 Very often varieties of high cultural value are worthless in 

 breeding because their characters seem not to be transmitted 

 to their progeny and, to the contrary, a good-for-nothing 

 variety in the vineyard is often valuable in breeding. 



From present knowledge it does not appear that new char- 

 acters are introduced in plants by hybridizing. K new variety 

 originating from hybridization is but a recombination of the 

 characters of the parents; the combination is new but the 

 characters are not. Thus, one parent of a hybridized grape 

 may contribute color, size, flavor and practically all the char- 

 acters of the fruit, while the other parent may contribute 

 vigor, hardiness, resistance to disease and the characters of the 

 vine. Or these and other characters in the make-up of a new 

 grape may be intermingled in any mathematical way possible. 

 The grape-breeder must make certain that one or the other of 

 the parents possesses the particular characters he desires in 

 his new grape. 



It is now known that the characters of the grape, in com- 

 mon with those of other plants, are inherited in accordance 

 with certain laws discovered by INIendel. The early workers 

 in grape-breeding did not know of these laws and could 

 not take aim in the work they were doing. Consequently, 

 hybridization was a maze \\\ which these })reeders ♦)ften 

 lost tlicniselves. Mendel's discoveries, howe\er, assure a 

 regularity of averages and give a definiteness and constancy 



