1 8 Breeding Plants and Animals. 



The experiment station has one or two thousand 

 other newly-selected hybrid wheats in its nursery field 

 test plats, some of which' it is hoped will prove worthy 

 of supplanting those disseminated. This station's op- 

 portunity to add two to five bushels per acre, six to fif- 

 teen million dollars per annum, to the crop of wheat in 

 Minnesota, is by no means singular to Minnesota, be- 

 cause other states have crops of which the average yield 

 is ridiculously small. It may require 25, 50, or even 

 100 years to increase the crop of wheat five bushels 

 per acre by breeding, regardless of any additional in- 

 crease which may come from better methods of man- 

 aging the farms and fields. In any event, the effort 

 will pay. A wheat germ which can be the parent of a 

 variety which will yield a bushel more of wheat is 

 worth millions. The yield alone is not the only point for 

 improvement, even in the wheat. The hard wheats can 

 be made still harder and the soft wheats can be so im- 

 proved that they will rival the hard wheats in the tough- 

 ness of their gluten, in the color of their bread, and in 

 the nutriment they contain. It is quite as much of an 

 undertaking to hunt for such germs in places where 

 they are so much needed as to hunt for diamonds in the 

 greatest diamond mines. 



Corn is the king concentrate for animal rations, in 

 that it yields more money per acre when fed to live 

 stock over a larger area than any other crop. Dr. Hop- 

 kins, Prof. Shamel, Prof. Holclen, and others in Illinois 

 and Iowa, are showing what may be done in improving 

 corn. They are emphasizing the fact that farmers in 

 their field selection have bred mainly for yield and 

 that now an additional opportunity offers in improving 

 corn in America's great corn belt lies in increasing the 

 nitrogen and fat percentages, and the yield of these 

 compounds per acre. No doubt the Illinois Corn Breed- 

 ers' Association, headed by the State Experiment Sta- 

 tion, will have the credit in ten years of having increased 

 the value of the corn crop of that great state five or ten 

 per cent. In Minnesota, the experiment station took 



