50 DATE GROWING 



advantage of the equality of sex which comes from 

 planting seeds — the drawback is too apparent. One 

 must wait several years before his palms bloom, and 

 in the meantime he is caring for fifty or sixty males 

 out of every hundred palms — males which he will 

 destroy as soon as he can detect them, but in the mean- 

 time all must be watered, fertilized, cultivated alike. 

 Let us take a concrete instance: A. and B. start date 

 plantations at the same time, the former with one 

 hundred offshoots, the latter with one hundred 

 seedlings. At the end of five years A. is getting a 

 profitable crop from every one of his hundred palms, 

 while B. has thrown away fifty or more males and 

 thirty or forty of the remaining females, and is rue- 

 fully contemplating the mixed quality of the rest. 

 The knowledge that his dates are good to eat does 

 not compensate him for the fact that the product of 

 his twelve or fifteen remaining trees is too diverse 

 for anything but low-priced trade. 



In practice, of course, B. would partly overcome 

 this handicap by planting a very large number of 

 seeds; yet the principle holds good. And in addition, 

 every palm planted means so much more expense 

 in cultivation, as well as the value of the ground 

 which it occupies until it is dug up and thrown away, 



I alluded to the possibility of breeding a strain 

 of dates that will come fairly true to seed. This is a 

 field in which there will be a real future, but as it is 

 not likely to be entered by the commercial grower, 

 it is hardly worth while to dwell on it at length. 

 The United States Department of Agriculture and the 

 University of Arizona staff have undertaken to breed 



