Journal of Agriculture. [8 May, 1908. 



THE IMPKOVEMEXT OF CEREALS BY SELECTION 

 AXI) CROSSIXCt. 



D. Mc Alpine, Vegetable Pat Iiolo gist. 



I. Selection. 



From the dawn of civilization tlie cereals ha\e been culti\ated to 

 provide the necessary food for the human race, and no other agricultural 

 crop has received such care and attention. Various races of cereals have 

 ■existed from the earliest times, and even the ancient Romans recognised 

 the necessity for keeping these cultivated races as pure as possible. Thus 

 Virgil in the Georgics (I. 197) writes — " The chosen seed through years 

 and labour improved, was seen to run back, unless yearly man selected 

 by hand the largest and fullest of ears." Selection in this primitive sense 

 was the choice of the best and most representative plants for seed, in 

 order to keep them pure and free from mixture with inferior sorts. The 

 intelligent agriculturalist at the present day selects his seed in this sense 

 to mamtain the standard of excellence, but the removal of impurities can 

 hardly be considered as an imT)roven'ient of the race which it is desired 

 to cultivate. 



Selection as applied to the impro\ement of cereals has only been 

 followed in a methodical way from the early part of the 19th century 

 and, at the present time, there is a widespread m.ovement going on of 

 endeavouring to raise the standard as high as practical skill and scientific 

 knowledge can do it. 



We will begin by considering the practice of those who have been 

 successful breeders of cereals and from their practice endeavour to deter- 

 mine the principles which guided them in their work. 



Prin'Ciple of Selectiox. 

 Le Couteur was one of the first on his farm in Jerse\- to carrv out the 

 principle of selection in a methodical manner, and he w;;s induced to do 

 this after the visit of a Spanish Professor of Botany, who pointed out 

 to iiim that the wdieats he then cultivated were not really pure and uniform 

 as he thought, but consisted of a mixture of various kinds. In one field 

 of wheat he succeeded in pointing out no less than 23 different sorts, and 

 Le Couteur took the hint and saved the seeds of a single plant from each 

 of these supposed varieties. He cultivated each of these separately and 

 multiplied them, until he obtained sufficient for a comparison of their 

 yielding qualities. The best new varieties were isolated in this way and 

 one of them he put upon the market under the name of '' Talavera de 

 Bellevue " about 1830. It is described and illustrated by Vilmorin in 

 his work on the best wheats, Les meilleurs bles, as a tall white variety 

 with long and slender white heads, almost awnless and with fine pointed 

 grains, it produces an abundance of good straw and grain and it was 

 chosen on account of its producing the largest amount of the finest and 

 v/hitest flour. It does not stand cold winters well and is therefore limited 

 in its distribution, but it is still one of the most generally cultivated 

 French wheats and is also grown in England. Le Couteur succee'ded, 

 by his method of carefully choosing individual plants and subsequent 

 isolation of the progeny, in producing a \ariety so pure and uniform 

 that all attempts to improve its peculiar qualities have failed, since it 

 offered no departure from the type sufficient for selection to act upon. 



