PLANT BREEDING IN SCANDINAVIA 



I. INTRODUCTION 



There is no subject associated with plant life which is of greater im- 

 portance yet which is less perfectly understood than that of plant improve- 

 ment. Efforts to guard against the deterioration of cultivated races date 

 back to the early Romans who, according to Virgil, recognized the need for 

 continued care in preventing the inclusion of variations of inferior value. 

 The idea of actually improving plants is of comparatively recent origin, 

 dating probably from about the beginning of the nineteenth century. Since 

 that time great strides have been made and it is only with difficulty that one 

 is able to follow at all adequately, the rapid accumulation of experimental 

 data. 



While the idea of organic progression had its birth among the early 

 Greeks and while many theories were later advanced by prominent investi- 

 gators as to the "mode" by which new forms arise, yet it remained with 

 Chas. Darwin to first develop a well supported theory of evolution which he 

 called the " Theory of Natural Selection." This theory, as is well known, 

 assumes that a constant inherent variation is going on within the race. 

 Some of the resulting variants will be stronger and will survive, others will be 

 weaker and will perish in the struggle. The Darwinian principle has been 

 widely applied in practice with a view to the improvement of cultivated 

 varieties and not without a certain measure of success. 



An enormous impulse to further investigation in the realm of biological 

 science was given by the rediscovery and confirmation in 1900 of Mendel's 

 famous principles of heredity (25) (first communicated to the Naturalists' 

 Society of Briinn in 1865, but subsequently overlooked) by DeVries, Correns 

 and Tschermak, subsequently defended and developed as they were by 

 Bateson of England (1). The appearance in the same year of the "Muta- 

 tion Theory" propounded by DeVries (78) also contributed greatly to a 

 revival of interest in matters pertaining to the great vital problems of 

 natural science. 



The views expressed in these theories have served not only to deprive 

 the principle of Darwinism of many of those attributes with which it had 

 been invested but to bring about a vital change in the general conception of 

 the whole phenomena of variation and heredity. These views, together 

 with the degree to which they find either support or contradiction in the 

 experiences of the leading Scandinavian investigators, will be discussed in 

 the following pages. 



