HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK. 



The Value of Selection in the Propagation 

 of Trees and Plants* 



By G. T. Powell — June 13, 1906. 



The limit or possibilities of production of a tree or plant, or of an acre 

 of land, have never yet been reached or known. At the Columbian Exposi- 

 tion held in Chicago in 1893, New York State made an exhibit of potatoes 

 that gave a yield of 1,000 bushels from an acre, but on French soil 1,353 

 bushels have been produced on an acre, while from small plots in England 

 A the rate of 1,650 bushels have been produced per acre. Two factors have 

 entered into the making of these great yields: — the enrichment of the soil 

 and the selection of seed that had buds capable of making strong plants with 

 power for very great production. 



By a careful study of individual plants and the selection of seed from 

 them, great advance has been made in the culture of the sugar beet. While 

 the general average of beets grown from commercial seed is .fifteen to seven- 

 teen per cent, of sugar content, one grower of seed on the Pacific Coast 

 found from analysis of samples from 300 beets selected for seed a varia- 

 tion of twenty-one to twenty-four per cent., there being fifteen out of the 

 number showing the higher percentage. 



An increase of two per cent, in the saccharine matter of the beet would 

 make an increase of 50,000 tons of sugar annually produced in the United 

 States. The selection of the best seed becomes of the greatest importance 

 to the grower, the factory, the refinery and to the consumers of sugar. 



In no one field has there been greater advance in plant breeding and 

 selection than with corn. Yields of 243 measured bushels in the crib per 

 acre were produced in 1905, while the total yield for the United States 

 reached 2,700,000,000 bushels, the value of which was $1,216,000,000. But the 

 work of highest value, through breeding and selection, has been that of in- 

 creasing the protein element of corn. Protein has the highest vaule of any 

 part of a food plant for it furnishes the most essential and important element 

 of nutrition, — that which goes to make blood, bone and muscle, while the 

 starch provides the sugar and fat which supplies the needed heat of the body. 



Corn-breeding has been carried to a point in the increase m protein un- 

 til it now equals that of wheat. The average of a large number of wheats 

 will not exceed fourteen per cent, of protein, while through breeding and 

 selection, the protein element of corn has been increased from ten to fifteen 

 per cent. This is of immense value to over 80,000,000 of the population of 

 our country, as also to many more millions in other countries who find in 

 corn a cheap and most highly nutritive food. The value of increasing, 

 through breeding, the most highly nutritive part of the grain to this extent 

 can hardly be appreciated. 



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