136 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



never made any claims for pedigree plants, supplied plants that 

 gave 155 grams to the plant. 



So at the present writing the claims that are being made for 

 superiority in these so-called pedigree plants are not founded on 

 facts. When it comes to trying them out, you do not get any 

 such results as they claim for them. Of course, as Professor 

 Beach points out, there is a possibility of bud variation. If it has 

 ever occurred in strawberries I don't know of it. There is a 

 possibility in strawberries, but when a man gets it he will 

 know it. 



I am not going into the abstract question of pedigree in 

 plants, as I said in the beginning. That has already been dis- 

 cussed some. I discuss it with my students, but I want about a 

 month for that subject usually, five lectures a week and four long 

 weeks, before I can get them to get much of a grasp of the 

 abstract theory of pedigree in plants. 



In the Missouri case, in the work with strawberries, at the 

 beginning of these experiments they started with two plots. The 

 plants of one plot were propagated from six very productive 

 plants which produced nearly four times the fruit of the six 

 plants giving very low production from which the plants in the 

 second plot were propagated. Each year propagation was made 

 by bud or runner selection from the least productive plants of 

 the one plot and the most productive plants of the other. These 

 were planted and started in new plots. This brought the most 

 productive plants in one plot and the least productive in the 

 other. This was continued for fifteen years. They always 

 selected the poorest producing plants from one plot and the best 

 from the other. 



At the end of fifteen years the same range of variation has 

 continued to exist. You can go into the second plot and get high 

 producing plants and go into the high producing plot (so called) 

 and get poor producing plants. Thus you have no pedigree by 

 selection from bud propagation. 



A few minutes ago one of the speakers called attention to 

 the Minnesota 1017 strawberry, that certain plants made runners 

 and others not. There is a difference in the individual plants. 

 Some have the habit of overbearing and others make runners, 

 and that is an individual difference. After five years of careful 

 selection, using the least productive plants in one plot and the 

 highest productive plants in the other, we will have the wide 

 range of variation in plants from the same plot. 



