Show experiment INCREASES YIELD OF POTATOES ONE HUNDRED BUSHELS 1 in n an experiment on tue me improve anent me ot potatoes by hill selection i which has been under tinder way at the utah agricultural experiment station for or nine years an increase in yield ot of one hundred bushels an acre has been bei be se 1 i cured according to professor george stewart author ol of a recent bulletin 1 reporting the results ot of this expert ment V I 1 the work was begun in 1911 by dr daj F S harris who Is at present tor ter and agronomist of the station in ili 1916 tho the work was wag taken overby over by pro fessor stewart who has continued the work up to the present when the tha work was begun a number of the highest yielding hills were selected from the Ala jestice bangor and peerless varieties then being grown at the tha station each hill was put in a separate paper bag and numbered the following year each hill was used to plant one row ot of potatoes at harvest each year thereafter each hill has been dug separately and the tubers placed in a paper bag with iest proper number during the winter each hill has been carefully care tully weighed and the tubers counted and then returned to the bag for sto storage rage luring during the winter from this data some of the best hills from the best rows and some of the better hills from the poorer rows were again selected for planting the following year this process lias has been continued for the last nine years an unselected strain being grown each year for comparison by 1915 just three years the selected strains yielded an average of bushels to the acre as compared with 1793 bushels to the acre for ahe unselected from 1915 to 1920 the selected strain has the unselected stock of the same variety by more than a hundred bushels an acre except in 1919 1910 when tiler there e was a difference of only bushels the following year however the selected strains again out yielded the unselected strain by 1686 bushels the small difference in 1919 is attributed to the very poor growing season in addition to a greater yield per acre the individual tubers have been larger more uniform and more nearly tree free from dl disease sease |