LUTHER BURBANK 



be made to develop varieties of beet having a 

 larger sugar content. 



It is said that the beets at first used contained 

 only about six per cent of sugar. 



But by careful selection through a series of 

 generations it has proved possible to increase the 

 sugar content of the beet, just as the length of 

 fiber of the cotton-boll was increased, merely by 

 paying heed generation after generation to the 

 individual plants that showed the best qualities, 

 and saving the seed of these plants only for the 

 raising of future crops. 



Year by year the sugar content of the best 

 varieties of beets was increased until from six per 

 cent it had advanced to twenty per cent, and in 

 the case of some individual beets even to thirty- 

 five per cent; and in a few cases as high as thirty- 

 six per cent has been secured from whole fields of 

 beets in Colorado. This should be a wonderful 

 stimulant to plant developers everywhere. 



There is perhaps no other case so widely known 

 or involving such large financial interests in which 

 a corresponding improvement has been made in a 

 commercial plant within recent years. 



My own share in this work has been, until quite 

 recently, that of an adviser rather than that of a 

 direct experimenter. Some twenty years ago I 

 was asked by the sugar-beet manufacturers of both 



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