INTRODUCTION 



THE sugar beet is one of the most scientifically bred 

 plants in the world. Other plants are bred for bulk 

 or beauty or flavor, but the sugar beet is bred for its 

 chemical constituents; not for the plant itself, but for 

 its resultant product, sugar, which, by the aid of the 

 light, is gathered wholly from the atmosphere at the 

 under, outer edges of the leaves and from there is car- 

 ried through the leaf and leaf-stalks and deposited in 

 the root. 



Beginning with a little scraggy, irregular-shaped 

 plant which weighed but a few ounces, and in France 

 yielded, only 5.89 tons per acre in 1812, the botanical 

 wizards have developed a large, regular-shaped, one 

 and one-half to two pound root which in Germany, 

 the greatest beet-sugar producing country, yields an 

 average of about 14 tons per acre from 1,300,000 acres. 

 More important even than the increase in size has 

 been the increase in sugar content. Originally contain- 

 ing but 4 to 5 per cent, of sugar, of which Achard in 



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