130 SUGAR 



can induce parents with complementary characters to 

 flower together. In such work any cane with known 

 partial infertility, whether it be of male or female organ, 

 will be of special service. For instance, the Vellai cane, 

 the best Coimbatore variety, introduced many years ago 

 from abroad, has poorly developed stamens and little 

 good pollen. Advantage has been taken of this during 

 the past year, and the flowers have been dusted with 

 pollen of a number of different varieties which happened 

 .to be in flower at the same time. We cannot assume that 

 .the offsprings are hybrids, however, because Vellai has 

 some fertile pollen; we must wait and watch the develop- 

 ment of any known peculiarity of the supposed male 

 parent. Such being the present state of affairs, and it 

 being highly desirable to obtain results of some sort as 

 -early as possible, crossing, selfing, and all Mendelian 

 work are at present kept in the background; and the old 

 chance method of raising as many seedlings as possible 

 from arrows of good parents and selecting the most 

 healthy of these for further trial and weeding out the 

 undesirables, is being constantly pushed forwards. We 

 are not without encouragement, even thus early, for 

 some seedlings analysed have surprisingly good juice, at 

 least fifty this last year having over 17 per cent, of sucrose 

 and half a dozen over 19 per cent. But we must wait and 

 see whether these good characters remain constant, and 

 we labour under the additional disadvantage that seed- 

 lings which give good>results at Coimbatore have to be 

 tested further in North India. An exhaustive study has, 

 therefore, been commenced as to the relative behaviour 

 of various canes and seedlings in Coimbatore and in 

 various parts of North India. There is every convenience 

 for this study, because all along the sugar tract a chain 

 of local farms has been opened, part of whose work will 

 toe the testing of such varieties as are sent up from the 

 cane-breeding station in Madras. 



