220 The Sugar-Beet in America 



Kleinwanzlebener, Excelsior, Imperial, Simon-Legrand, 

 Florimond, Bultean-Desprez Richest, Schrieber, Heine, 

 Brabant Demesmal, Electoral Elite, Imperator. The 

 two first-named varieties are most widely known in this 

 country. 



If America is to establish a permanent sugar-beet-seed 

 industry, one of the first steps will be the production of 

 strains of beets suited to the needs of the country. With- 

 out doubt, some of the better European strains will fur- 

 nish the basis for selection. In any event the work should 

 be seriously undertaken and continued as long as necessary. 

 This will require many years of careful work, but the re- 

 turns probably will justify all the work that is done. 



SINGLE-GERM SEED 



The fact that the seed-ball contains several germs, 

 each of which may produce a beet plant, makes the work 

 of thinning laborious. Even though the seeds are scat- 

 tered at intervals in the row, the young plants are found 

 in such clusters that the extra plants can be removed 

 successfully only by hand. This means that the number 

 of acres of beets a farmer can raise is usually limited by 

 the amount of help he can secure at thinning time. It 

 also means that the expense of thinning is high. 



These conditions led the United States Department of 

 Agriculture, in the early days of the beet-sugar industry, 

 to conduct rather extensive experiments on the breeding 

 of strains of beets producing seed-balls that contained 

 but one germ. Though some progress was made, the 

 results were not altogether satisfactory and the work was 



