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Show POTATO BREEDING Potato breeding mny bo said to In-volvo In-volvo tho raising of seedlings from hand pollinated or self fertilized H seeds. It becomos Intelligent breed- H ing only when It deals with seedlings H produced from hand cross pollinated jfl flowors protected from Insects and 9j borns on plants possessing corlaln characteristics which It seems dcslr- 9 ablo to comblno In tho resultant pro- geny. In other words, intelligent plant I breeding requires tho samo careful consideration of tho parents plants that is given to tlio selection ot tho H malo nnd female by tho progressive . up to dato animal breeder. Selection v plays a very important rolo In this I kind of breeding. Sinco 1910 moro than 60,000 potato seedlings havo been grown by tho 9 Department of Agrlculturo nt its Ar- H lington farm. Out of . somo 28,000 Ll socdllngs grown In 1910, nearly 19,000 tl developed tubers; most of tho re- 11 malnlug 9000 cither failed to grow at 11 tor bolng transferred from tho green w houso to tho open grounds or elso I thoy failed to produco tubors. All ot I thoso which developed tubers woro 1 saved and grown In 1911. At harvest I tlmo all woro again saved for further I study and description. This entailed n largo amount ot work nnd tho recording re-cording of many data, but tho object Is taking so many data and In grow. Ing n largo numbor of seedlings which would ordinarily bo discarded was to noto whether any chnngo occurred In tho seedling In tho second nnd subsequent sub-sequent generations. In other words, It was thought doslrablo to determine whether ono might safely discard nil unpromising looking seedlings tho first season.- Tho rosults Bccured in-dlcato in-dlcato that thoro ls littlo likelihood that a first year soedllng producing pronged, irrogular shaped tubors will over develop into a smooth tubored vnrlety. It Is also equally npparent that a deep rod or blue skinned seedling seed-ling Is never Ukoly to becomo a do-slrablo do-slrablo commercial varloty. On tho othor hand, tho oxporlmentor Is not nlways Justified In discarding a seedling seed-ling which hns produced only two or three small tubors, wolghlng In tlio aggregate possibly not over ono ounco, provided tho tubers nro smooth shapely, nnd whlto skinned. Occas-slonally Occas-slonally a soedllng Is found that is unusually prollfio In both tubors nnd sood balls. Tho data secured by tho Department havo sorved to mako It posslblo to discard first year fuellings fuel-lings rather freoly, with n fair dogrco of rollanco, It Is bolloved, both with respect to thoso discarded and thoso rclalnod.. (T. |