[April, 1910. 



SCIENTIFIC AGRICULTURE. 



IMPROVEMENT OP CROPS BY 

 SEED SELECTION. 



By R. C. Wood, 

 Deputy Director of Agriculture, 

 Northern Division. 



(From the Madras Agricultural Calen- 

 dar, March, 1910.) 



Every one who has observed crops 

 growing in the fields, will have noticed 

 that the plants are not all alike. Thus 

 in a field of transplanted paddy, some 

 of the plants will show more side shoots 

 than others, even though all have the 

 same amount of space and water. In a 

 field of gogu, some plants will have en- 

 tire leaves, while others will have divid- 

 ed leaves. In a field of jonna some 

 plants have close heads, while others 

 have loose heads. These differences are 

 easily seen, and are well known, but 

 they are not considered of importance. 

 But plants vary just as much in the 

 cpjalities which we cannot see, as in 

 their outward shapes, and iu a field of 

 any crop just as in a crowd of men, 

 there are good and bad mixed up to- 

 gether. Now, according to the Telugu 

 proverb which says (vithoo okti vesthe 

 chettoo okati moluchuua) "If you sow 

 one kind of seed, will a plant of a 

 different kind spring up?" it follows 

 that, if we take only seed from the good 

 plants for sowing the crop next year, 

 there will be a great improvement. 

 How may this be effected ? Let us take 

 the case of cotton, as that is a crop in 

 which the process has been carried out 

 for some years at the Nandyal Agri- 

 cultural Station in the Kurnool district. 



The local cotton crop as it grows in 

 the fields is generally a mixture of red 

 cotton (yerrapati) and white cotton 

 (tellapatti), The plants which produce 

 these differently coloured cottons are 

 very different in appearance, the yer;a- 



Eatti being tall and thin, Avith short 

 ranches, while the tellapatti is a bushy 

 plant with long branches. It is a great 

 mistake to allow any mixture of cottons 

 to be grown in this way, because a 

 mixed lint is, for various reasons, very 

 difficult to spin and weave by machin- 

 ery, so that the cotton dealers will 

 not give such a good price for it, as 

 for a cotton all of one sort. As the 

 yerrapatti is an inferior plant, it 

 must be got rid of at once, and ac- 

 cordingly all the plants of this sort 

 were pulled out of a cornet of a field, 

 so that, though the yield was less, the 

 seed cotton (kappas) picked from that 



corner of the field was free from any 

 admixture, and was kept separate aud 

 not ginned until sowing time. From 

 this seed next year was grown a field 

 entirely of tellapatti plants, so that 

 this simple process led at once to a 

 crop of increased value. But upon more 

 careful examination of the crop, it was 

 fo und that there were differences even 

 in these tellapatti plants. Some plants 

 produced more bolls than others, some 

 plants ripened earlier than others ; 

 some plants spread out their lower 

 branches so that they trailed on the 

 ground and the lint got dirtied, while 

 others grew tall and shapely with 

 hpavily laden branches and a pyra- 

 midal shape ; others again became thin 

 and produced long upright stems bear- 

 ing very few bolls. From this it was 

 clear that further and more careful 

 selection would have to be made. Ac- 

 cordingly as the crop began to ripen, 

 plants were carefully marked in the field 

 of just the sort it was wished to ob- 

 tain. The plants were big, strong and 

 properly branched, were healthy, show- 

 ed no aphis or leaf spot, produced plenty 

 of large bolls which opened properly, 

 with white lint inside. To each of 

 these trees a small cloth bag was tied, 

 a number was given, and the lint picked 

 from each tree and that alone was put 

 into each bag. Thus at the end of the 

 season were obtained a number of bags 

 each containing the produce of a single 

 plant. During the hot weather each 

 of these bags was very carefully ex- 

 amined in the following way. First, 

 the kappas from each bag were ginned, 

 and the seed and the lint separately 

 weighed. It Avas found as a result that 

 in some of the bags, 100 tolas weight of 

 kappas gave 33 tolas Aveight of lint, while 

 in others only 20 tolas of lint were obtain- 

 ed. Out of about 150 bags the fifty 

 shoAving the highest weight of lint were 

 kept. The lint of these Avas then ex- 

 amined for colour, foi strength and for 

 evenness of staple. These are the three 

 qualities which are valuable for cotton, 

 which is to be spun by machinery, and, 

 as most of the cotton in this district 

 is bought by mill-owners, it is necessary 

 to grow only the sort which they want, 

 as they will then be prepared to give 

 a better price for it. The twelve that 

 seemed best Avere finally chosen and were 

 sown next season in single lines, one to 

 each bag, that is, to each of last year's 

 plants. The best plants of these rows 

 were again chosen in the following year, 

 while the seed from the rest of the 

 plants in the twelve rows is used for the 



