UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



BULLETIN No. 1011 



Contribution from the Bureau of Plant Industry 

 WM. A. TAYLOR Chief 



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Washington, D. C. 



PROFESSIONAL PAPER. 



February 23, 1922 



EFFECTS OF MUTILATING THE SEEDS ON THE 

 GROWTH AND PRODUCTIVENESS OF CORN. 



By E. B. Brown, 1 Agronomist, Corn Investigations, Office of Cereal Investigations. 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 

 Previous investigations of the effects of the re- 

 moval of food reserves from seeds 1 



Experiments on the effects of mutilation of 



the seed coats and endosperms 3 



Preparation of the seeds 4 



Plan of the experiments 4 



Experimental data on the effects of the muti- 

 lation of the seed coats and endosperms ... 5 



Experiments on the effects of the mutilation 



of the germs 8 



Germination of the mutilated germs 9 



Growth and seed production of the muti- 

 lated germs 10 



Summary 12 



Literature cited 13 



PREVIOUS INVESTIGATIONS OF THE EFFECTS OF THE REMOVAL OF 

 FOOD RESERVES FROM SEEDS. 



The effects of the removal or suppression of portions of the food 

 reserves of the seed upon germination and upon the subsequent 

 growth and development of the plant have been investigated exten- 

 sively. Following is a brief account of some of the experiments that 

 are more or less analogous to those reported in this bulletin. 



Sachs (5) 2 was perhaps the first to germinate embryos of maize 

 detached from the endosperm. They developed dwarf plants that 

 soon perished. These germinations were made during the course of 

 investigations upon the processes of germination, and there seems to 

 have been no attempt to extend the experiments beyond the early 

 stages of growth. 



Van Tieghem (8) reports that in an experiment in which he dis- 

 sected the plumule, the radicle, and the cotyledons out of seeds of 

 Helianthus annuus, he found that these fundamental organs not only 

 were capable of independent growth but each was capable of regener- 

 ating the other two and developing perfect plants. In somewhat 



1 The writer acknowledges his indebtedness to J. M. Hammerly and H. S. Garrison, of the Office of Cereal 

 Investigations, for aid hi conducting these experiments. 

 s The serial numbers (italic) in parentheses refer to " Literature cited," at the end of this bulletin. 

 07250°— 22— Bull. 1011 1 



