20 



tion of the amount of yield and the commercial quality of the fruits, the highest 

 yielding trees usually producing the highest proportion of first-grade fruits of 

 the most desirable commercial size. From the commercial records of individual 

 tree production for a reasonable period, a classification of the trees with regard 

 to their value for cultivation can be made, the undesirable trees top-worked or 

 replanted, trees located for individual care and attention as needed, superior 

 trees, if any be found, located as sources of bud-wood for propagation ; and the 

 results of tree treatments definitely determined. 



THE COMMERCIAL UTILIZATION OF INDIVIDUAL PLANT RECORDS. 



The commercial plant records may be utilized in the origination of new 

 varieties, the isolation of valuable strains, and in the amelioration of strains 

 and varieties. The manner in which this utilization is effected in the citrus 

 industry in California will be briefly described (60). 



The California Fruit Growers' Exchange, a cooperative non-profit organi- 

 zation of more than ten thousand citrus growers, established in May, 1917, a 

 bud department of the Fruit Growers' Supply Company, which is a subsidiary 

 organization furnishing materials and orchard supplies of all kinds to the mem- 

 bers of the Exchange at cost. The bud department was established for the pur- 

 pose of carrying out commercially the results of the investigational individual 

 tree performance record work in the citrus fruits. In order to make this service 

 available to the citrus industry as a whole it was provided by the Exchange that 

 the bud department should supply reliable buds secured from superior parent 

 trees, selected on the basis of their performance records, to all persons desiring 

 them, whether they were members of the Exchange or not. In this way the 

 work of the bud department is a public service. Within three years since the 

 founding of the bud department it has furnished more than a million selected 

 buds to propagators at a cost of five cents each to members of the Exchange, 

 and for six cents each to non-members. The buds have been chiefly used by 

 nurserymen in the propagation of nursery trees and to a less extent by growers 

 for top-working undesirable trees in established and bearing orchards. The buds 

 have been secured, for the most part, from superior parent trees found in the 

 best citrus orchards existing in California. The parent trees have been selected 

 as sources of bud-wood from a study of the commercial individual tree per- 

 formance records in these orchards and in some instances from the best trees in 

 the investigational performance record plats previously studied by the writer. 

 This bud department has been a success and self-sustaining from its beginning. 

 The young trees in the orchards grown from these buds and others selected and 

 distributed by the writer during preceding years have produced earlier and more 

 uniformly good crops of fruit than trees in comparative orchards which were 

 propagated in the ordinary way. The value of this improved production, due to 

 bud selection at this time, has been estimated by Mr. G. H. Powell, general man- 

 ager of the California Fruit Growers' Exchange, to amount to more than one 

 million dollars annually. In connection with the work of securing and dis- 

 tributing selected citrus buds, the bud department maintains an experimental 



