June 1,1925 
Fusarium Resistant Cabbage 
1029 
tions have the extreme earliness of cer¬ 
tain Copenhagen strains, but are in 
line with later strains of this variety 
and with the generally accepted Glory 
of Enkhuizen type. 
The writers have had to contend 
with greater practical difficulties in¬ 
herent in methods of handling the 
early varieties as compared with the 
late-season varieties. These results 
from the fact that in the first place, in 
order to secure evidence as to both 
relative disease resistance and horti¬ 
cultural type, the plants must be 
brought to maturity in late summer 
rather than autumn; and in the second 
place, plants matured so early, espe¬ 
cially those of the earlier soft types, do 
not keep well in winter storage. 
Many of the selections in the early 
years of the work were lost during 
winter storage, and this loss was 
naturally most severe with the earlier 
maturing individuals. 
During the last three years this 
difficulty has been overcome to a con¬ 
siderable degree in two ways. In the 
first place, the resistant plants, after 
having passed the severe yellows period 
in midsummer and having sufficiently 
approached maturity to permit of 
critical selection for earliness and type, 
are “lifted” from time to time suffi¬ 
ciently to break part of the root system 
and thus delay final maturation. 
They can thus be allowed to remain in 
the field, under Wisconsin conditions, 
until freezing weather, when winter 
cabbage is naturally placed in storage. 
By thus shortening the storage period, 
greater success is insured. In the 
second place, a small number of the 
best heads, after six to eight weeks of 
dormancy in the field or in storage, are 
planted in the greenhouse, where with 
proper handling a seed crop may be 
matured in May and June. The latter 
method has the especial advantage of 
making it possible to try out the new 
strains immediately. It also has the 
advantage of facilitating hand pollina¬ 
tion both for selling and crossing. 
SELECTIONS FROM ALL HEAD EARLY 
Two series of selections from All 
Head Early have been carried through 
the second generation. The original 
stock in each case was from a lot of 
seed grown by Linnaeus Allen at 
Cutchogue, Long Island. The original 
selections of the first series were made 
from a thoroughly sick field at Union 
Grove, Wis., in 1919. The second 
series was selected from rows grown in 
trial plots at Racine, Wis., in 1920. 
The behavior of the resulting strains on 
sick soil at Racine is summarized in 
Table I. In each season’s trials there 
was included for comparative purposes 
a susceptible commercial strain of the 
variety and the Wisconsin All Seasons, 
which is one of the most highly resistant 
types. The trials extended over the 
years 1921 to 1923. Some variation 
between the seasons in the severity of 
yellows is evident. Judging from the 
behavior of the commercial strain and 
of Wisconsin All Seasons, the year 
1921 afforded the severest test, while 
that of 1923 was perhaps the least 
severe. It is well to keep this point 
in mind in comparing the behavior of 
the different series reported. 
Heavy mortality of seed plants 
reduced the trials in Series I to a single 
strain in each generation. It will be 
seen from the data in Table I that 
considerable resistance was already 
shown in the first generation (XL-20-1 
(pi. 1, A), though it was not. equal to 
Wisconsin All Seasons. Of the selec¬ 
tions from this lot, only one seed plant 
survived, and, having grown in isola¬ 
tion, it was probably self-pollinated. 
In the trial of this strain (XL-22-1) 
no yellows whatever was found in a 
large population, although a trace of 
the disease might have resulted in a 
warmer season (pi. 1, B). The plants 
in this trial were unusually uniform, 
but unfortunately they deviated so 
widely from the characteristic All 
Head Early type as to be of little 
value. They were of a yellowish green 
rather than the characteristic dark 
green color; the heads matured much 
later than All Head Early, and had a. 
decided tendency to become peaked 
as they matured This example illus¬ 
trates the great danger of rapid digres¬ 
sion from the desired type in the selec¬ 
tion of cabbage which, being normally 
cross-pollinated, is probably homozy¬ 
gous in few if any of its characters. 
In the second series less rapid 
advance in the acquisition of resistance 
was made. All strains showed a high 
percentage of yellows in the Broesch 
plot and somewhat less in the Drum¬ 
mond plot. The difference in disease 
occurrence between the two plots is 
probably due to the fact that two types 
of soil are represented, which may vary 
somewhat as to temperature as well 
as other factors. From the five first- 
generation strains tried, one (XL-21-5) 
was picked for further selection, since 
it developed the best type of plant, 
while it was nearly equal to XL-21-4 
and superior to the other strains in 
resistance. Of the 26 heads selected 
from XL-21-5, four plants produced 
seed in the greenhouse, and these 
