Au.Cfust. 1922 



SCIENTIFIC AGRICULTURE 



405 



The Growing and Marketing of fmproved Strains 



of Herbage Plants 



R. G. STAPLEDON 



DirtH'tor. Plant Breeding Station, 

 Aberystwyth, Wales. 



(An address at the C. S. T. A. Convention) 

 It is only with tlie foundation of the Plant (a higher percentage of leaf and a higher 



Breeding Station in Wales that we in Eng 

 land — so to say — have started serious re- 

 searches with a view to improving our stocks 

 of grasses and clovers. You in Canada have 

 been before us, as have our cousins over 

 the border, yet it remains a fact, I suppose, 

 that speaking generally far more critical 

 breeding work has everywhere been done 

 with cereals. 



Our great seed trade at home has done 

 excellent work with cereals, and in this con- 

 nection the work of the late John Garton 

 stands out prominently. In Wales we have 

 no more generally reliable oat than Garton's 

 Record ; and the House of Sutton has long 

 stood for great improvements in root crops. 

 In regard to grasses and clovers our seed 

 trade has been dominated by the importance 

 of high quality seed and has not yet be- 

 come alive — in my view — to the all impor- 

 tance of strain. It is the fundamental signif- 

 icance of strain upon which I desire to dwell 

 today, and after having reviewed some of 

 the evidence from our own work to support 

 my contention, I wish to say something about 

 the difficulties connected with the produc- 

 tion of high quality seed of the strains most 

 desired and the keeping of same pure. 



In one respect we in England, indeed we 

 in Europe, generally are more fortunate than 

 you over on this side. I refer to the fact 

 that practically all of our agriculturally used 

 grasses and clovers are indigenous to our 

 country. Thus the obvious first step to our 

 critical work has been to institute a detailed 

 comparison between the yielding and intim- 

 ate botanical characteristics of seed from 

 all the chief foreign sources with that col- 

 lected from native habitats. We have ad- 

 vanced some way with these trials in res- 

 pect of Cocksfoot, Rye Grass, Timothy and 

 the clovers and it is perhaps very remarkable 

 that concerning these we are able to make 

 certain all-embracing generalizations. 



With reference to the grasses it transpires 

 that the indigenous seed gives rise to plants 

 which produce more tillers than the foreign 



proportion of barren tillers), to flower later 

 and to be altogether more persistent. With 

 reference to yield we find in the second and 

 subsequent harvest years the indigenous 

 easily beat the commercial; in the first har- 

 vest year the yields are closer, some foreign 

 beating the indigenous, but on average fig- 

 ures the indigenous usually come first even 

 in the first year; in the seeding year the 

 foreign almost invariably produce the greater 

 weights. 



In a general way the foreign are heavier 

 seed producers than the indigenous, and in 

 any event ripen their seed more regularly 

 and over a shorter period of time. I by no 

 means despair of good seeding habits being 

 met with amongst super-strains of herbage 

 grasses ; the seed crop results, however, from 

 a greater number of smaller panicles, at 

 least such is the evidence from Cocksfoot. 



In support of. what I have said I will 

 quote you the minimum of figures : 



RYE GRASS 



Indigenous . . 



Commercial . 

 TIMOTHY 



Indigenous . . 



Commercial . . 

 COCKSFOOT 



Indigenous . . 



Commercial . . 



I need not trouble you with yield figures, 

 as these and other data are fully presented 

 in a bulletin recently published from my 

 Station.* 



* Preliminary Investigations with Her- 

 bage Plants, Welsh Plant Breeding Station, 

 Aberystwyth, Whales. Series H. No. 1, Sea- 

 sons *1919-1921. 



