A Continuous Breeding Program Essential 
We have been breeding bright, highest quality cigarette 
tobaccos for the past fourteen years—since 1928. This 
work was started by our late President and Founder, 
Mr. David R. Coker, when he was convinced of the very 
great need of such work and saw what contribution pure, 
well bred seed could make to the thousands of good tobacco 
growers. This select group was being unmercifully penal- 
ized by having to plant seed of unknown breeding and of 
doubtful performance. Tobacco is a most expensive labor 
consuming crop with which no chance of failure can be 
taken. 
This breeding program was undertaken and organized 
to insure to growers seed of dependable, highly bred, pure, 
proven quality tobaccos. The performance of our pedigreed 
varieties proves that this has been accomplished. Test 
results show some to be superior to others in certain 
characteristics and growers have their preferences based 
on performance on their particular soil types. 
While results obtained are most gratifying, the in- 
breeding and test program must be kept up or we would 
lose that which we have striven so long and hard to 
accomplish. Tobacco is open pollinated; bees carry pollen 
from field to field. These hybrid plants are usually vigor- 
ous—stand out, and there is great danger of a grower 
who saves his own seed, selecting these hybrid plants, 
with dire results. Seed cost so little that a grower simply 
cannot take such a chance. 
Perfection is never attained, but our breeders bend 
every effort to produce strains that approach perfection. 
Each new strain offered is a further approach to this 
goal. The most intensive breeding program is carried on 
with each of these tobaccos to strengthen still further 
their good characteristics and to eliminate every possible 
weakness. 
Back of all of our strains are years of inbreeding and 
testing. Inbreeding piles up both the good blood and the 
bad. Those lines having lethal or undesirable charac- 
teristics were soon spotted and discarded. Our present 
pedigreed lines have concentrated and purified the good 
and desirable characteristics. 
Breeding field of Coker’s Mammoth Gold tobacco. 

