The following paper was read by W. M. Hays : 



Plant Improvements Needed in Specific Cases. 



BY W. M. HAYS, 

 Assistant Secretary of Agriculture. 



We have in the United States probably $5,000,000 worth 

 of animal and plant products whose value could be increased 

 10 to 20% by breeding. The organization of public cooperative 

 and private breeding establishments of sufficient magnitude to 

 thus add $500,000,000 to $1,000,000,000 to our plant and animal 

 production does not seem overdifficult. Effective methods have 

 been devised and large results have been achieved which war- 

 rant that the plant-breeding work being organized in the United 

 States Department of Agriculture and that being developed in 

 the State experiment stations and in branch experiment stations 

 be greatly increased. Seed farms, nursery farms, special plant- 

 breeding farms and private individuals, both professional and 

 amateur, have reason to increase their equipment and their ener- 

 gies along this line. Cooperation between the United States 

 Department of Agriculture and the State experiment stations 

 and the cooperation of these institutions with farmers and in- 

 dividual plant breeders and growers of purebred seeds and plants 

 is developing rapidly. The American Breeders' Association 

 with its forty-odd committees, meetings like this Conference on 

 Plant Hardiness and Acclimatization, seed and plant breeders' 

 associations, including associations for breeding specific crops, 

 as seed corn breeders' associations, are doing very much to bring 

 together in groups men to do team work in extending this vast 

 enterprise. 



The detailed studies of our soils and mapping of our agri- 

 cultural regions according to soil, climatic and crop conditions 

 are dividing up the territory of the American States into in- 

 numerable varietal districts. A thousand varieties of corn are 

 needed for as many local conditions. There are scores, if not 



