CHAPTER XIII. 



BREEDING EXPERIMENTS AT THE MINNESOTA STATION 



Before taking up the problems in animal breeding, 

 a summary of the more prominent lines of breeding field 

 crops under way in 1903 at the Minnesota Experiment 

 Station may be of interest. Most of this work is de- 

 voted to variety formation and variety improvement, 

 though numerous theoretical experiments are also con- 

 ducted. In each case mentioned the hills contained only 

 a single plant, that each individual plant might be 

 studied and compared with its fellows under similar 

 conditions, and that the values of parent plants might 

 be learned in the terms of the average values of their 

 progeny. 



Of alfalfa, 18,000 plants in hills two feet apart each 

 way were planted in 1901, 1902 and 1903. Most of these 

 are of the hardy American and Turkestan varieties 

 which have been found best adapted to the Northwest 

 and which are being bred for still hardier forms. Some 

 of these are very promising in field tests. Since they 

 yield sparingly of seed an effort is being made to in- 

 crease the seed production of these hardy forms. It 

 seems quite probable that these hardy alfalfas must be 

 grown in warmer climates to produce seed for planting 

 in the Middle Northwest. 



Barley was represented by abtmt 20,000 plants, 4x4 

 inches apart, one-third of which were of numerous 

 hybrids from crosses made during the past eight years. 

 One-third was under selection to produce new varieties 

 and another third was devoted to theoretical experi- 

 ments. Among these are efforts to find how to breed 

 early and late varieties of barley and also varieties which 

 will stand erect on the rich fields of the stock-raiser. 



Of white beans there were several thousands of 



