Nursery Centgener Breeding of Wheat. 67 



nursery and resulting new varieties are coming out 

 each year. 



This method may seem complex and like going too 

 much into minutia for anything practical, but when it 

 is realized that a single kernel of wheat has in a number 

 of instances been multiplied into a permanent commer- 

 cial variety the relative breeding power of one mother 

 plant as compared with another becomes a matter of 

 great significance., Some mother plants are so weak in 

 their ability to project their good qualities into their 

 progeny that in a few generations the stocks run out. 

 Other mother plants are average in their ability to pro- 

 duce yields in new varieties ; still others have superior 

 ability. One wheat plant in Minnesota has been so 

 multiplied that its progeny is now covering about 60,- 

 ooo acres of land. If that stock of wheat were in- 

 creased ten-fold for a few years it would be of sufficient 

 quantity to sow all the wheat in two or three States. 

 If the progeny of one kernel of wheat can be so rapidly 

 and widely multiplied there is wrapped 'up in the pos- 

 sibilities of that one kernel large values. It would seem 

 that it is quite worth while for States and communities 

 to expend reasonable sums of tjioney in testing the 

 breeding powers of individual plants and having found 

 superior ones use renewed effort to bring about their 

 general cultivation. 



The pedigrees of these mother plants are kept with 

 quite as much care as are the pedigrees- of pure bred 

 cattle or horses. A system of numbering has been de- 

 vised so that each little plot has a number and, if de- 

 sired, each little plant within the little plot is given a 

 number. In the nursery year book the plot number of 

 this year is beside the plot number of last y;ear, thus 

 enabling the foreman to trace the blood lines back 

 through a series of years. The progeny of each mother 

 plant is also given a nursery stock number which serves 

 as a name so long as that stock is in the nursery. This 

 is sometimes necessary as a nursery stock often re- 

 tnains in the nurserv for a series of years and more than 



