COKER’S PLANT BREEDING AT 
HARTSVILLE IMPORTANT TO 
SOUTHERN AGRICULTURE 
(Continued from page 3) 
The superiorities are chosen in advance, to 
fit what will be needed by a community, state or 
nation. Not merely in bushels, bales and pounds, 
but also in resistance to diseases, of which there 
are several hundred strains in the half dozen 
main crops of the South alone. Further, the 
breeding provides crops which grow early, or 
late, or fast or slow, or. resist frost. Some, 
particularly in these days, are bred to furnish 
rich feed for grazing beef cattle, yet afterward : 
to mature to produce their grains for man. The seed for our oat test plots are care 
The possibilities are multitude. This year the 
Cokers have some oats that grow five to six feet 
tall. They are only an experiment. The object 
is to learn whether it would pay to get either 
a good crop of oats or be able to use for 
ensilage. 
Mendel’s laws work both in reverse, and also 
for diseases as well as good plants. Superior 
new varieties may deteriorate in a few years. 
The old diseases mutate into new species. The 
seed fields have to keep ahead of all these handi- 
caps by breeding to meet them. 
There probably would be little or no cotton 
growing today in all the coastal plains from 
Virginia to Florida, inclusive, and in some parts 
of Alabama and Mississippi, had it not been for 
the breeding of varieties which were resistant 
to the cotton wilt disease. Some of that work 
was done here. The Mendelian work is always co- 
operative, the United States department of agri- 
culture stations everywhere lending a hand. 
Wheat is growing this year in Southern fields 
row for uniform seeding. 
where it scarcely existed a few years ago, and = Pond 
with yields of national significance. Georgetown The seed are planted by hand a 
county, South Carolina, has increased from two hand-operated implements. 
to about 200 wheat growers in eight years. The 
Mendelian seeds are giving the South many other 
crops where few or none of the kind were raised 
before. 
A new dream of the Cokers is to make the 
South one of the world’s greatest dairy lands 
in the very areas where even today children 
do not get enough milk. Sponsor for this dream 
is J. F. Clyburn. 
He sees the United States having to furnish 
not only meat to starving nations, but breeding 
stock to a Europe which is eating its breeders. 
He and others in this country are at work on 
breeding programs to be ready for peace. 
The old monk’s laws make it a certainty that 
the South can, if she wishes, produce everything 
needed to cover plains and hills with enough 
livestock to share in the world demand and to 
enrich the Southern farmer in health, and prob- 
ably in pocketbook. 
Page Ten 
Inspecting oat test rows for 

hardiness. 
