^^ STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



torv often show decided variations in the amount of sugar; even beets 

 from the same patch will sometimes show decided difference when 

 analyzed by the same chemist at the factory. Why is this? Is the 

 chemist incompetent, or the method unreliable? Before discussing- the 

 discrepancies, let me briefly state the 



METHODS OF ANALYSIS. 



The most common method is to pulp the whole beet, after removing- 

 the crown, express the juice, estimate the total solids in solution by 

 a brix spindle, clarify the juice by a lead salt, polarize the juice to de- 

 termine the per cent of sugar in solution, and then from the relation 

 of total solids in solution to the sugar present determine the coefficient 

 of purit}'. This will give the per cent of sugar in the juice, and it is 

 so reported from our laboratory. 



Another method sometimes used is a modification of Pellet's diifusion 

 process, where 26.048 grams of fjulped beet are placed in a flask and 

 water filled in till it measures 100 c. c, the whole heated in water bath 

 to 85 degrees C. for an hour, decolorized by lead salt, filtered and polar- 

 ized to determine directly the per cent of sugar. While this process 

 takes more time, it more nearlj^ approaches the conditions of diffusion 

 in the batteries where the sliced beets are treated with hot water, but 

 gives results about one-half per cent lower in sugar than the method 

 by expressing the beet juice. The Michigan law, however, prescribes 

 paj^ment according to the amount of sugar in the beet, not the amount 

 that can be extracted by the manufacturer. So long as the factories 

 claim the benefit of our bounty law, they will have to keep within the 

 limits of its enactments. 



CAUSES OF VARIATION. 



Let us now return to consider some of the causes of variation in the 

 content of sugar in beets. 



1st. The sugar beet is a very highly developed plant, producing an 

 abnormal amount of sugar on account of stimulating breeding and 

 careful selection of parent plants to produce the seed. The plant from 

 which the whole sugar bet^t race has sprung is the White Silesian, which 

 at the beginning (1747) only contained about 7 per cent of sugar. The 

 large increase in the modern sugar beet has come from breeding and 

 selection. All races, animal or vegetable, abnormally developed in 

 any direction, tend to revert to the original type unless the conditions 

 of unusual development are fully maintained. The breeder of blooded 

 stock knows this, and the breeder of blooded plants finds it equally true. 

 When the original White Silesian, with 7 per cent, was developed into 

 Klien Wanzlebener or Vilmorin, with 14 to 16 per cent, is it any won- 

 der that individuals in this class may fall back a few degrees? In 

 the great beet seed plantations of Germany, where beets are bred by 

 pedigree and every mother beet is tested for its content of sugar, it is 

 often found that daughters from the same mother, growing side hj side, 

 will show beets of widely variant quality in the amount of sugar. 

 Beets that fall below a certain standard, though having a good pedi- 

 gree, are rejected as candidates for mother beets. If beets with the 



