NOTES AND LITEEATUEE 



BIOMETRIC STUDIES ON THE SOMATIC AND GENETIC 

 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SUGAR BEET 



The beet sugar industry, amounting to hundreds of millions of dol- 

 lars evei-y year, is the direct result of scientific breeding. 



A biologrist is loath to demur at any statement wliicli attaches 

 economic importance to scientific woi'k of tlu> kiiiJ in which he 

 is interested. The statement may 1).' true. Certainly no one 

 can deny that far greater system and standardization of routine 

 has obtained in the beet sugar industry than in many other 

 branches of agriculture. But the trained scientific man who 

 conscientiously works through some thousands of pages of the 

 literature of sugar beet breeding and cultivation must hesitate 

 before regarding it as a triumph of scientific method. He will 

 rather, I think, feel that science has fallen woefully short of its 

 possibilities in dealing with many problems of great theoretical 

 interest and economic significance. 



In no field of agricultural work is the failure of scientific and 

 practical men to cooperate less excusable than in that of sugar- 

 beet breeding. In the routine operations of sugar-beet produc- 

 tion chemical data of a relatively satisfactory degree of trust- 

 worthiness are obtained for great numbers of individuals. It is 

 not uneonservative to say that millions of individual weighings, 

 polarizations or analyses of various degrees of completeness 

 have been made. For two decades the biometrie formula which 

 might have given meaning to some of these masses of data have 

 been available. Yet the problems which might have been solved 

 have remained unelucidated, to the material loss of both biology 

 and industry. 



It seems worth while to illustrate the truth of thesr statf- 

 ments by some of the advances in our knowle.jMv of tlir pMiotie 

 and somatic physiology of the sugar heet which have been made 

 possible by the application of the biometrie fornuHa'. 



Consider first of all one of tlu- simplest problems -that of the 

 relationship between the weight of the root and the sugar con- 

 tent of its juice. Notwithstanding considerable di.scussiou this 

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