BREEDING FOR HARDINESS. 29I 



BREEDING FOR HARDINESS. 



PROF. ANDREW BOSS, ST, ANTHONY PARK. 



Minnesota has been noted for her efforts in plant breeding since 

 the beginning of her career as a state. When Peter M. Gideon 

 chose to invest the last two dollars he possessed for apple seeds 

 rather than for clothes for himself, plant breeding received a vig- 

 orous upward lift. Did it ever occur to you that had he been con- 

 tented with a dollar's worth of apple seeds, or even with a dollar 

 and ninety cents' worth, we might never have enjoyed the flavor 

 of an apple from a hardy Wealthy tree. Harris, Lyman, Elliot and 

 others have been instrumental in advancing the horticultural side 

 of plant breeding. Field crop breeders have been hardly less active. 

 D. L. Wellman has been for many years an improver of wheat by 

 selection, and some varieties of grain of considerable value have 

 come from his hand. Corn breeding has received attention from 

 many sources, and, as a result, this important crop is grown fifty to 

 seventy-five miles farther north than was possible ten or fifteen 

 years ago. 



It is perhaps through the work of Prof. W. M. Hays, however, 

 that cereal crop breeding received its greatest impetus. Through 

 the production of No. 169 wheat, No. 105 barley, and No. 25 flax, 

 the public has become acquainted with his work, and enough has 

 been added to the yield of the wheat, barley and flax crops of the 

 state to support experimental plant breeding for a quarter of a 

 century or more. 



At the Experiment Station we are growing annually, 700,000 

 to 800,000 individual plants, covering seventeen or more different 

 cereal and grass crops. All. of these plants are grown from single 

 seeds planted by hand and are brought under individual observa- 

 tions and records kept of 10 per cent or more. These records deal 

 with yield, strength of straw, rust resistance, hardiness and such 

 other characteristics as are likely to prove useful in the develop- 

 ment of plants of economic value. The work is done largely by 

 hand and is laborious and exacting, but the resu.ts reached in the 

 past offer great encouragement for its continuance. A bushel or 

 two more of wheat per acre than we are getting, a stiff strawed 

 oat that will stand up on rich land, or a winter wneat hardy enough 

 to stand our severe winters and increase our wheat yield five to 

 ten bushels per acre, would prove to be worth the cost of labor 

 and expense many times over. 



The problem in our work always has been and always will be 

 to find that particular individiml plant that has the desired char- 



