46 



FOKAGE CEOPS IN DENMAEK 



In his report of 1901 Helweg formulated the chief result 

 of the Competitive Cultivations from 1889 to 1899 as follows : 

 "It is the strain more than the variety which determines the 

 value of the root crop. The question which farmers had been 

 asking for some years, viz. : Which variety shall I cultivate ? 

 was first gradually replaced by the question : Which strain 

 shall I cultivate ? And this question again led up to the 

 inquiry : Where are the best strains to be obtained ? This, 

 then, is the question which the next series of competitions 

 during the following ten years will have to solve." 



The average yields in cwts, of solids or dry matter per acre 

 of the three classes of strains of the various varieties were 

 calculated for each of the six years, from 1894 to 1899, and from 

 these again were found the average yields per class for all six 

 years. These are given in the next table, together with the 

 average number of strains tested annually. 



It will be noticed that of the fifty strains of mangels tested 

 annually only a little more than a quarter came in Class I. and 

 one quarter came in Class III. As the samples were derived 

 from most of the best known seed growers in the country, it is 

 likely that this proportion was no worse than the average for 

 the country, in other words, that only a little more than one 

 quarter of the acreage under mangels was sown with seeds of 

 first- class strains, and that one quarter was sown with seeds of 

 third-class strains. About the same applies to the cultivation 



