GARDENS FOR PLANT BREEDERS 



Requirements Necessary for Encouragement of Plant Breeding Heretofore 



Misunderstood — Envirormient Usually Not Suitable for Really 



Constructive Work — Breeder Should be in Close 



Touch with His Plants 



David Fairchild 



Agricultural Explorer in Charge of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction, Bureau of 

 Plant Industry, U. S. Department of Agrictdture, Washington, D. C. 



WHY cannot we realize the condi- 

 tions necessary for the encour- 

 agement of plant breeding and 

 go ahead and create them? 

 Seen from a perspective which reaches 

 back to the establishment of the experi- 

 ment stations in this country, it appears 

 to me that we have misunderstood these 

 requirements. The environment of the 

 State l£xperiment Station is as far as 

 possible from what could be considered 

 ideal for the plant breeder, and i am con- 

 fident that one reason why, today, with 

 all that has been published about plant 

 breeding, we have so amazingly few 

 practical breeders is because wc have 

 misunderstood the requirements of a 

 plant breeder. 



The laboratory in a big station l^uild- 

 ing which may have the name "Plant 

 Breeding" on the door is not a place 

 where plant breeding is done. It is a 

 place where the subject is discussed and 

 the laws of heredity are disputed and 

 new principles are worked out, but it is 

 not the place of origin of new varieties 

 of practical importance to the human 

 race. Why should we not recognize in 

 the equipment of the plant breeding 

 laboratory that plant breeding is an 

 early morning occupation, and that the 

 materials with which the breeder deals 

 are of the most fleeting nature — that, 

 like the appearance and disappearance 

 of a comet in the sky, the simultaneous 

 flowering side by side of two plant species 

 is often the event of a plant breeder's 

 life time, and that, unless he is on hand 

 and fully prepared to make immediately 

 a host of crosses, only one of which per- 

 haps succeeds, he never gets another 

 chance at it, and years jxiss, in all lik-eli- 



112 



hood, before another breeder succeeds in 

 getting the plants in bloom together. 

 In the hybridizing of trees and shrubs, 

 this is peculiarly true. The making of 

 crosses is a very different kind of work 

 from that of the investigator of alco- 

 holic specimens or the microscopic 

 studies of lower plant life. 



FORCED FROM PRACTICAL FIELD 



As 1 look over the field, it would seem 

 as though the plant breeders who, under 

 the right environment, would have pro- 

 duced new plants of the greatest value, 

 have been forced by the difficulties which 

 surrounded them, to enter those statis- 

 tical and microscopic phases of plant 

 breeding which can be done in the indoor 

 laboratories, equipped with microscopes 

 and slide rules. I am not in the least 

 discounting the value of this work, but 

 it does seem as though, b}'' the expendi- 

 ture of a small amount of money, we 

 might make what would appear to be the 

 most attractive places imaginable for 

 men with a real fondness for plants — 

 ]olaces from which would be coming 

 vear after year new hybrids and selec- 

 tions of the greatest value to the horti- 

 culture and agriculture of the world. 



It has been my good fortune to be 

 associated in a helpful capacity with 

 several plant breeders in this country, 

 and, as 1 look over their surroundings, it 

 seems to me that they have one thing in 

 common. They live among their plants 

 — not a mile or two away from them. 



I remember the remarkal)le place of 

 C. P. Gillett, which he called the Barren 

 Hill Nursery, and which he had trans- 

 formed into a little paradise of fasci- 

 nating ])lants at Nevada City, Cal. I 



