HOW ARE NEW VARIETIES OF POTATOES PRODUCED?

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2634, 15 September 1882, Page 3

HOW ARE NEW VARIETIES OF POTATOES PRODUCED?

The above question is asked by“D.W.,” Lae Co., lowa, who follows it with : —“ Can you give the manner of fertilising, the time to fertilise, and the time to plant the ssod balls ?” Many of the well-known varieties of potatoes have not been produced at all; that is not by any direct agency of the cultivator. We must in the first place state that the potato is not a root, but a short, thick underground branch of the plant. We have several times seen, and no doubt many of our readers have also, the branches of the potato vine developed as potatoes above ground. We must start with the idea, then, that the potato is really a branch or stem. It is a well-established fact among fruit growers and florists, that a shoot or branch of a plant may produce very different fruits or flowers from the rest of the plant, and this occurs without any assignable cause, and without any human agency. These oases, by horticulturists called “sports,” are very numerous. A late peach has been known to produce a branch on which all the fruit was early. Other peach trees have formed branches which bore only nectarines—merely a sport of the peach. Certain branches on yellow plum trees have produced red plums, and shoots on purple grape vines have borne white grapes. In flowers, especially roses, these variations are very numerous. We only cite these cases to show what may take place, indeed, has taken place, in the potato. The tuber being really a branch, it may, like a branch of peach, plum, or grape, vary. A notable example of this is the “ Late Bose,” In a field of “ Early Rase,” a single plant was found to be green, and still growing long after the vines in the rest of the field were dead and ready for the harvest. The owner had the good sense to save and perpetuate the product of this vine, and now, as the “ Late Bose,” it is one of our valuable kinds. Other varieties have been produced in & similar manner. We cannot cause this variation to take place, but as it may occur anywhere, the careful cultivator should take note of any marked differences in the vines that may appe, in his potato field. As to raising new varieties from seed, we doubt if much actual cross-fertilisation has ever been done. To refer to fruits again, the seeds of the apples or the peaches from any one tree, taken as they are without any attempt at fertilisation, will give a great variety of seedlings, and we know it to bo the same with potatoes. That greatest of all modern potatoes—greatest in itself, and in the varieties it has given rise to—the 11 Early Bose, 1 ' came from a chance seed ball of the coarse but prolific “ Garnet Ohili.” A grower had picked the seed ball from bis patch without selection, and pinned it against his window to ripen, and finally gave it to Mr Breese —of blessed potato memory—who sowed the seeds. From the seeds in this chance ball, picked without any selection, came “ Early Bose,” “ Breese’s Prolific,” and several others, all of excellent quality, but all very different, some being white, others red, some long, others round, some early and some late j indeed, from that one and now famous seed ball were raised potatoes differing among themselves as much as potatoes can differ. In view of the results from this single seed ball we doubt many of the stories of direct crossing. Still, if one wishes to exneriment in this, the flower of the potato affords an easy subject, as the anthers do not shed their pollen early, and if removed a* soon as the flower opens tho pollen from another flower can be readily applied to the pistil. As to raising potatoes from the seed, the balls are kept until the time for sowing, when the seeds are removed and treated precisely as tomato seeds. They are started in boxes in the greenhouse, tho hotbed, or in the kitchen window (Mr Broese followed the last-named method), and the plants treated exactly like tomato plants, save that they may be set in the open ground somewhat earlier. Mr Breese informed us that the I original p.ant of “Early Bose” gave him several good-sized tubers the first year, and stated that in his experience if a seedling potato did not do this the first season it_ was - not worth while to continue to grow it.— “American Agriculturist,"