154 STUDIES IN INDIAN SUGARCANE SEEDLINGS 



seedlings of the same parentage. Thus, the Chitian seedlings varied from 

 8% to 21% and Naanal from 5% to 17%, and, generally speaking, the more 

 analyses recorded in any one lot, the wider the range of the sucrose in the 

 jnice. There is also a definite relation between parents and offspring in this 

 respect, the better parents producing the better seedlings. The analyses of 

 the crosses are also interesting, in that they show that the sucrose in the 

 seedlings approximates to the average of the two parents. In the other 

 cases, of seedlings from parents not specially crossed, or " general collections," 

 the average sucrose of the seedlings is generally lower than that of the parents, 

 and this may be due to the fact, stated elsewhere, that it was not always pos- 

 sible to analyse a seedling at its optimum. Note must also be taken of the 

 character of the land on the farm, for many varieties have given very poor 

 results there. Thus, in Cheni, a Mysore cane, while ten analyses at Bangalore 

 gave an average sucrose percentage of 17 "01, twelve on the farm gave only 

 1 2-07, a figure more comparable with that in the seedlings. So also, SJwkar- 

 chynia in Bihar gave 16-94, whereas on the farm it only reached 12-94. There 

 is also a veiy marked difference in the results obtained on the Cane-breeding 

 Station an 1 on the heavy tank irrigated land on the adjoining Coimbatore 

 Central Farm. The local canes, Chittan, Karvn, Kaludai Boothan and Pooran 

 also gave analyses a good deal lower in the seedlings than in the parents, but 

 not sufficiently so as to suggest crosses with a wild Saccharum, of which, 

 moreover, there was )io trace in the morphological characters of the seedlings. 

 In SdrefJta and Chin, there appears to be less difference between the juice 

 anaylses collected from North India and those made at Coimbatore, suggesting 

 that, for these canes at any rate, the conditions on the farm are fairly com- 

 parable with those in North India. 



The prime object of the Cane-breeding Station is (o raise new and 

 hardy canes for North India, which will be cajjable of being grown in the 

 fields under ryots' treatment and, in order to judge how seedlings raised at 

 Coimbatore would behave in various parts of North India, some nine of the 

 • vailier seedlings of various parentage were distributed to Pusa, Shahjehanpur 

 and Jubbulpore. It is unf(jrtunate that analyses have only been recorded at 

 tiie latter place, but seedlings have also been grown on the Central Farm wet 

 lands and on different soils in the station itself. The accompanying table 

 gives the sucrose aud glucose in the juice of a set of seedlings grown outside 

 the farm. From this table it will be seen that the seedlings respond readily 

 to changes in soil and water, and there appears to be some probability that, 

 in general, seedlings raised in the farm will, if anything, improve iu the quality 

 of their juice when grown elsewhere. 



