ENUMERATION OF SEEDLINGS. 



1. Period 1911-13. 



Cultivation of the sugarcane in India is extremely ancient, and in many- 

 parts of the country it has laid a firm hold on the time-honoured rotation of 

 crops. But this cultivation has not been progressive of late years, partly no 

 doubt owing to the fact that the jaggery or gur which is its object is not 

 exported to any considerable extent. The Indian gur market is self-contained 

 and therefore unaffected by the wave of progress which has lately swept over 

 agriculture in the tropics. But with regard to sugar, the matter is very differ- 

 ent for, while in former times India took a prominent part in the manufacture 

 and export of this substance, the local production has not kept pace with that 

 in other countries and, in fact, sugar manufacture in India is a neghgible 

 quantity, and increasing supplies are introduced every year to meet the 

 growing needs of the people. The Government of India has recently devoted 

 marked attention to this matter and, as there appears to be no intrinsic reason 

 why India should not produce its own sugar, work has commenced in the 

 Agricultural Department on this staple in two directions. In the first place, 

 the local methods of manufacture need revision and, in the second, the class 

 of canes grown is of very poor quality. The latter subject having been exhaus- 

 tively discussed at the Meeting of the Board of Agriculture held at Pusa in 

 November 1911, it was decided to found a cane-breeding station whose main 

 line of work was to determine the possibility of raising cane seedKngs, and 

 thereby to introduce new and improved varieties suitable to the local conditions 

 of the country. This station has been located at Coimbatore in the Madras 

 Presidency, where the canes are known to flower profusely year by year. It 

 was opened in April 1913, but a certain amount of preliminary work was first 

 done in the Botanic Garden attached to the local Agricultural College. 



In the first seed pans laid down in the garden, many apparent cane seedlings 

 turned out to be of those of common grasses whose seed had accidentally crept 

 in but, early in 1912, some fourteen were obtained which proved to be seedlings 

 of local varieties of sugarcane. The question as to whether .sugarcane seedlings 

 could be raised in India, about which there had been considerable doubt, was 

 thus satisfactorily solved. But this meagre result, after sowing many seed 



