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Show Fortune Lies In Beet Tops, Savant Says Ten million dollars, gained simplj by shifting the position of an agricultural ag-ricultural knife one and a half inches this is the latest offering of science to national wealth. Americans can save this fortune merely by cutting off the tops of their sugar beets a little higher up, says Dr. Ernest Reed, professor of botany at Syracuse university, in announcing his discovery early this week. At present, the tops cut oil and thrown away contain one-tenth one-tenth of the sugar crop, with a prospective value at wholesale prices pri-ces of approximately $10,000,000. His discovery, as often happens in science, was made while the professor pro-fessor was stutdying a theory, one held by an eminent Italian chemist, chem-ist, Etore Molinari, that sugar is concentrated principally in the heart of a beet. In accord with this belief, a practice in the midwest mid-west and the far west has been to send "toppers" through the beet fields slicing off not only the leaves, but also the supposedly barren top section. In years of work and by developing develop-ing a new method of testing for sugar, Professor Reed says he believes be-lieves he has disproved the Molinari Molin-ari theory. He says he has proved conclusively that the discarded tops are rich in sugar. "Sugar beet growers who have been leaving at least one-tenth of their crop lying to rot in the fields can increase their yield substantially substan-tially by application of this discovery," dis-covery," he says. "The leaves can be pulled or cut off economically without removing large portions of the beet." Another product of Professor Reed's hands, also announced tonight, to-night, is a nameless new plant, a cross betveen a sugar beet and a Swiss chard. It is considerably larger than sugar beet and produces pro-duces more sugar It probably will receive no name until it proves it can run nature's gauntlet of the survival of the fittest fit-test If the new beet is fertile enough to multiply like other beets. Dr Reed plans to introduce it to growers in Michigan, California, Colorado and other western states. |