Involves Immense and Painstaking Labor but It Gives an Accurate History of the Variations

GRAPE BREEDING. 191 involves immense and painstaking labor but it gives an accurate history of the variations. It is the only meiihod to be used where statistical studies of variation or heredity are desired. But for prac- tical purposes where economical results are wanted at the least possible expenses of time and labor without regard to the underlying laws which govern the variations and reproductions going on, it may be best to plant the seed resulting from crosses recording only the cross and letting the progeny "run wild," so to speak, until the period of variation is ended. Then select desired types, if they appear, and by cent- gener trials determine their value, propagating those that prove their worth. ' Downloaded from

INTRODUCTION AND TRIAL OF NEW SPECIES AND VARIETIES. Another line of work, which is sometimes considered foreign to plant breeding, is the introduction and trial of new species and new varieties of wheat. As much depends upon the intelligent selection http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/ of the proper variety as upon the soundness of the breeding process within the variety. We have experimented with over 200 varieties of wheat at this station. Out of this number only about 10 or 15 have been found worthy of perpetuation. And some of these hang on by a very slender thread. For example, some of the sorts im- ported from Russia are hardy to an extreme degree, although not sufficiently valuable to warrant perpetuation on their own account, they may be used as one parent in a cross with a wheat that is higher- yielding, earlier-maturing, and of better quality but tender, and their peculiar attribute of hardiness may thus be ingrafted on the more at Carleton University on July 22, 2015 desirable tender wheat. Occasionally an importation of a new variety is successful at once and detailed breeding methods can be at once applied to make further improvement. The so-called Turkey wheat is a very good example, of a wheat already adapted to the sub-humid regions of the central West. Some of the varieties of Macaroni wheat have been found well adapted to the more arid regions of the middle West. "There is no doubt that these may be improved further by more intensive breeding work, and by such improvement add materially to the wealth of this region.

GRAPE BREEDING.

By S. A. BEACH, Ames, Iowa. A half century ago California grapes had not yet invaded our eastern markets. In the Eastern States some Vinifera varieties were being grown under glass by a few who could afford such luxuries. They were also cultivated to a very limited extent out of doors, albeit, uniformly with discouraging results. Native grapes were as yet grown in small quantities only, notwithstanding the fact that they had proven superior to the Viniferas for vineyard culture except in the 192 AMERICAN BREEDERS' ASSOCIATION. quality of the fruit, but among these there were a few which although inferior to Viniferas in sweetness and texture, were nevertheless of good enough quality to command good prices in market as table grapes and the planting of them was gradually being extended. Among these native varieties which were grown in the district from the Miss- issippi eastward to the Atlantic, Isabella and Catawba took the lead. In October, 1847, a national convention of fruit growers, the fore- runner of our present American Pomological Society, met in New

York in response to a call made by committees representing Downloaded from the Massachusetts and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Societies and the American Institute of New York City. In reporting this meeting A. J. Downing stated that it was by far the most important assemblage of horticulturists yet convened in the United States. Almost all of the Northern States were represented and from-as far west as St. Louis delegates and presidents of the various horticultural societies appeared and took part in the proceedings. At this convention a http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/ special fruit committee was appointed which was instructed to bring in a list of approved well known fruits for general cultivation. After an extended discussion both in the committee and in the convention, a select list of fruits for general cultivation was adopted by the whole convention. This list included 13 apples, 13 pears, 10 peaches, 9 plums, and 8 cherries, but no grapes. The following year a second meeting of the Congress of Fruit Growers assembled in New York. Among the fruits worthy of general cultivation which were added to the former list by this Congress were only two native grapes, Isabella and Catawba. Among the new varieties which were listed as promis- at Carleton University on July 22, 2015 ing "to be worthy of being added to the list for general cultivation" was only one grape, the Diana. Isabella which had thus far been grown for market purposes to a limited extent only, had in many cases given so good financial returns that the planting of it in commercial vineyards, particularly within easy shipping distance of New York and Philadelphia, was on the increase. The great drawback to the commercial planting of either Isabella or Catawba north of New Jersey and southern Ohio was that, except in favored localities, the seasons usually were not long enough for the fruit to ripen properly. As the industry of grape growing began to assume some degree of commercial importance, some few began to give earnest attention to the matter of seeking new and desirable varieties of native grapes which should be suitable for out-of-door cul- turein regions further north than Isabella could be successfully grown, or which should extend the grape season by ripening earlier than that variety. Both amateur and commercial fruit growers and nursery- men began to be aroused to the needs of the American horticulture in this direction. Among those who became actively interested in the work of originating desirable early ripening varieties of native grapes was a resident of an old Colonial town in northern Massachusetts. He had a few acres of poor, dry, sandy land about his home. In the garden, which had a southern exposure, he grew some native grapes. He mentions in particular that he was growing Catawba, Diana, and Isabella. He also tried to grow some of the Viniferas. The Diana GRAPE BREEDING. 193 was then new and untried. Isabella and Catawba did not ripen satis- factorily; so, as early as 1844, hoping to get something better suited to his locality than any of these, he began to grow grape seedlings. His attention was attracted to a chance seedling of the wild native Labmsca type which sprung up on his place from seed accidentally dropped or brought there by birds. He transplanted it into his garden near to the Catawba and other vines already mentioned. Upon its coming into bearing he was glad to find that it ripened early and was sweet. It produced short clusters of black grapes which dropped readily from the pedestals when fully ripe. The flowers were Downloaded from open to cross pollination from the surrounding vines. He planted the seeds of this wildling hoping to get therefrom a good early grape. One of the seedlings which grew from it proved so desirable that it was propagated as rapidly as possible. It was first exhibited before the Massachusetts Horticultural Society in 1852 as an unnamed seedling. It was again exhibited in 1853 when it attracted such favor- http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/ able notice that it was sold to a Boston nurseryman. It was named Concord after the town in which it originated and the following spring, 1854, was introduced into cultivation under that name. It rapidly grew in favor and soon came to be the leading grape in cultivation in the United States, a position which it still generally holds in all of the grape growing regions of this country where the Viniferas do not succeed. New York ranks next to California in the extent and value of her viticultural interests; and, in the production of table grapes, has

probably the distinction of leading even California, although within at Carleton University on July 22, 2015 recent years the proportion of the New York crop which is used for making wines, unfermented grape juice, fruit syrup, etc., has gradually increased. Nevertheless the vineyard planting in that State thus far has been almost wholly made from the standpoint of grov/ing table grapes. The area planted to vines in New York is about 60,000 acres of which about 25,000 acres lies in the Chautauqua grape belt in Chau- tauqua County, bordering Lake Erie. It is estimated that in this grape belt over 90 per cent of the vines are Concord and a considerable portion of the remainder are Concord seedlings principally Niagara, Worden, and Brighton. Nearly all of the native varieties of any note which have been introduced into vineyard culture within the last fifty years have been tried at one time or another in this Chautauqua region, but none of them has displaced or given promise of displacing the Concord and its kin in the Chautauqua grape belt. While the Concord does not hold quite that degree of supremacy in the other grape-growing regions of the eastern United States, that it holds in the grape belt above mentioned, yet it is an indisputable fact that in all of these regions it is the leading table grape of commercial vineyards, which means that it is the leading table grape of the world. Shortly before the Concord was introduced, Mr. John Fiske Allen of Salem, Massachusetts, produced the first known hybrid between a native American variety and Vinifera species. In his grape houses he was growing many choice varieties, of Vinifera grapes. With a view of hybridizing these with a native variety, he planted Isabella 194 AMERICAN BREEDERS ' ASSOCIATION. in a cold grapery by itself. As the blossoms appeared he removed the stamens and at the proper time applied to the pistils pollen of Chasselas, Black Prince, and Black Hamburg which he obtained from vines growing in another house. Among the seedlings produced from the hybridized seeds he grew the variety which is known today as the Allen Hybrid. In the Lady Washington, we have a cross between the Concord and Allen Hybrid which was produced by Ricketts some years later. Shortly after Allen Hybrid was originated, Mr. E. S. Rogers of the same city as Mr. Allen undertook the work of hybridiz- izing native grapes with Viniferas. As a result he produced that re- Downloaded from markable series of seedling grapes known as the Roger Hybrids which includes Merrimac, Massasoit, Wilder, Lindley, Agawam, Herbert, Salem, and other named varieties besides some that have never been named. The introduction of the Concord, because of the generally successful results which followed the planting of that variety, stimulated the http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/ interest of American Horticulturists in the subject of grape growing and particularly in the work of endeavoring to originate new varieties of merit which should be successful under conditions existing in the eastern United States. ' Many took up the work of hybridizing native grapes with Vinifera varieties. Others gave attention to the crossing of selected American var'eties with other American varieties or with hybrids of the Vinifera which had been already introduced into vineyard culture in the United States; others grew seedlings of selected varieties from seeds produced from flowers that had been left open to

cross-pollination in mixed vineyards. Many others have given atten- at Carleton University on July 22, 2015 tion to some chance seedling or other which has appeared in their garden or vineyard, the parentage of which is wholly unknown or can only be inferred or guessed at. In view of the immense amount of effort that has been expended in the originating of American grapes during the past fifty years, it is somewhat surprising that no grape has yet been brought out which has displaced the Concord or which gives any promise of so doing. Is this because the Concord represents the acme of perfection in Ameri- can grapes? Certainly not. What then is the reason? Is it not because the great bulk of this work has been unsystematic? The records show that thus far the use of Vinifera blood has brought with it some defect or other that has barred the varieties of this line of descent from becoming of prime commercial importance in the Concord-growing districts. Some of them are doubtless superior to Concord in size or in color or in flavor or in texture. Few of them are the equals of the Concords in strength of constitution and in productiveness. Most, if not all of them, are less hardy than Con- cord. If one desires to work along this line of trying to infuse Vini- fera blood into American grapes it would be wise for him to locate his operations where the environment is at least as austere as that under which the Concord was produced. It will be remembered that this was on a sterile hillside where the soil was dry and sandy and where during the winter the thermometer was apt to drop many degrees below zero. GRAPE BREEDING. 195

Aside from the work of hybridizing American with European varieties most of the efforts which have been made to improve our native grapes have partaken largely of the feature of gambling, because it has been done with parents which are mongrels, or crosses, or hybrids, concerning the hereditary equalities of which little or nothing is known. The cultivated grapes, of which it can be said that we know one parent with certainty, are few in number; fewer still are those both of whose parents are known; rare are those of which it can be said that we know even one grand-parent and very rare indeed are those whose complete lineage can be traced back with certainty for Downloaded from two generations, and yet we continue to work with this heterogeneous material and wonder why greater progress is not made. No great ad- vance in improving American grapes can be expected by continuing to follow such unsystematic and haphazard methods. How little of the vast amount of work which has been done in growing seedling grapes is worthy of being dignified by calling it Plant Breeding? We http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/ surely must begin to lay better foundations for future work if grape breeding is to give the results in America which we have a right to expect. First let us make a systematic investigation of the material which is now available for grape breeding in order that something definite may be learned about the unit characters with which we have to deal, their dominance, and their combination and correlation with other characters. We have seen that in the aggregate a really vast amount of work has been done in America during the last half century in crossing grapes and in growing grapes from selected parents. Thou- sands, yes, hundreds of thousands of seedling vines have been thus produced and discarded, but the workers have usually left scarcely at Carleton University on July 22, 2015 any record of the results which they obtained aside from the few sur- viving selected seedlings which they have handed down to us. A notable exception is found in Professor T. V. Munson. From time to time he has given accounts of .his work which throw some light upon the path which he has trod and which give us some definite in- information bearing upon the principles of grape breeding. Grape breeders should do more of this kind of work. We do not know how to use intelligently the varieties which are now available for breeding American grapes. We need better information as to what characters these grapes may reasonably be expected to transmit to their offspring. Tt is of fundamental importance to progress in this direction that pure breeding and cross-breeding with this material be carried on system- atically and persistently until such knowledge is gained. Until this is done our grape breeding must certainly continue to partake too largely of the elements of chance. We may continue to make crosses in the hope of getting certain desirable combinations but we shall work with the chances greatly against us and the results must neces- sarily be largely uncertain, but when the fundamental work above referred to has been done and when we have advanced to the position where we can deal with parents concerning whose prepotency we have somewhat definite knowledge, then we may prosecute the work of grape breeding with a more reasonable hope of. making progress in definite directions and of securing results previously planned for. 196 AMERICAN BREEDERS' ASSOCIATION.

In the grape breeding work which I have carried on during the past fourteen years at the State experiment station, at Geneva, New York, the effort has been not simply to breed grapes, but rather to learn how to breed grapes. The object has been not alone to produce new varieties of superior merit, although incidentally some apparently meritorious new varieties have been originated, but rather it has been the aim of the work to study heredity in the varieties which we are using in grape breeding. In one group of seedlings which I have produced the color of the fruit is uniformly white and certain combinations of parents have been discovered which have always given Downloaded from white-fruited seedlings. In other groups red is likewise a fixed color. Where a male vine has been used as one parent in a cross the percent- age of male vines in the seedlings thus produced has been noticeably increased as compared with crosses having both parents hermaphro- dites. Such results add to our knowledge of how to breed grapes. In all, about 225 groups of grape.seedlings have been bred in this work http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/ at Geneva and many thousands of seedlings have been produced. Under present conditions it appears that work of this kind must be mostly done either by the experiment stations or other public institutions, or under the patronage of the government. Private parties can afford to do but little of it. As a matter of fact, few if any individuals have been following the work of grape breeding in this country as a private enterprise for a considerable period without doing so at financial loss. Ephriam Bull, the originator of the Concord and of other less notable varieties, died a poor man. Now it is proposed to build him a costly monument. Jacob Moore, who has given to at Carleton University on July 22, 2015 America such varieties as Brighton, Diana, Hamburg, Geneva, and Diamond, and who has one of the best bred and most valuable collection of grape seedlings in America, after devoting a lifetime to breeding grapes and other fruits with remarkably successful results, finds himself in advanced years struggling in reduced circumstances to hold together and protect the collection of plants which represents practically all of the tangible material which is left to him out of his life work. He cannot afford to push this work ahead any further, and yet he has a lifetime of valuable experience behind him and the ability to make it count for more now than ever before. We have in Iowa a man who is doing more for the horticultural interests of the State than Luther Burbank is. In his modest way for 35 years he has carried on the work of breeding hardy fruits and particularly hardy apples for northern Iowa. The results of his labors are benefiting not only northern Iowa, but Minnesota, the Dakotas, and other regions where superior hardiness in fruits is a prime requi- site to their successful cultivation. In his enthusiasm and love for this cause he continues to carry on this work at a considerable expend- iture of time and effort and money. There are others, who, like those we have named, are benefiting the horticulture of the entire country by their labors but who are not receiving adequate compensation. Would it not be good economy to bring such men as these into cooperation with the United States Department of Agriculture or with the State experiment stations so ENCLOSING SINGLE PLANTS, ETC. 197 as to enable them to take up the work for which they are severally best fitted and carry it forward for the benefit of the horticultural interests of the country?

ENCLOSING SINGLE PLANTS AND ITS EFFECT ON A LARGE NUMBER OF IMPORTANT AGRICULTURAL SPECIES. Downloaded from By C. FBTJWIRTH, High School of Agriculture at Hohenheim, Wurtemberg, Germany. Success in the breeding of plants requires exact knowledge of the habits and characters of the plants experimented with. I have been engaged in the collection of a great variety of facts, and expect soon to publish the same, together with results of work done by others, in http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/ a book on plant breeding. I shall, here briefly summarize the results of some work I have done on a particular line—the inclosing of whole plants. The object of the experiments was to ascertain what would be the effect on seed production of enclosing the entire plant so as to prevent pollen from any other ,plant reaching it either by means of the wind or insects. The enclosing apparatus used in the case of plants which could be pollinated by wind, differed from that used with plants which could be pollinated by insects only. The enclosing was done with bags of

linen or oiled paper in the first case, and of mull (gauze) in the second at Carleton University on July 22, 2015 case. I also used instead of bags in some of the experiments squares of linen, or oiled paper, or mull, framed in wood. The following plants enclosed in this manner produced an ample crop of seeds: Triticum sativum, Hordeum vulgare, Avena sativa, Pisum sativum, Pisum arvense, Phaseglus vulgaris, Phaseolus inamcenus, Phaseolus lunatus, Vigna sesquipedalis, Dolichos lablab, Vicia sativa, Vicia monanthos, Ervum ervilia, Camelina sativa, Papaver sominferum, Beta vulgaris, Nicotiana rustica, Nicotiana tabacum. The following list contains all the more important species with which the enclosing did not prevent seed production, but greatly reduced the quantity of seed produced: Secale cereale, Zea Mays, Vicia Faba, Vicia vittosa, Phaseolus multiflorus, Brassica oleracea, Brassica Rapa oleifera, Brassica Napus, Sinapis alba, Trifolium incar- natum, Daucus carota, Avena flavescens, Phleum pratense, Alopecurus pratensis, Festuca ovina, Festuca pratensis. No fruit with seeds was produced by the following species when the single plants were enclosed.: Cichorium Intybus, Medicago sativa, Trifolium pratense, Trifolium repens, Trifolium hybridum, Hedysarum coronarium, Onobrychis vicicefolia, Galega officinalis. The Sunflower, Helianthus annuus,when single plants are enclosed gives ample fruit but the fruit is seedless. The above results have been obtained by a great number of trials made in most cases with several races. I wish to call attention to the fact that differences occur between races and individual plants of