PLANT HYBRIDISATION.

Wairarapa Age, 20 December 1932, Page 4

PLANT HYBRIDISATION.

WORK IN THE WAIRARAPA. MB. H. J. KIDD’S RESEARCHES. Some interesting information on the apple hybridisation and selection work which Mr. H. J. Kidd, of Greytown, has been carrying on for several years past was given last week to a representative of “The Age" by Mr. G. A. Green, organiser for the New Zealand Institute of Horticulture. The production of Kidd’s Orange Bed, a Delicious-Cox’s Orange Pippin cross, which had already established a New Zealand reputation, said Mr. Green, was the first of Mr. Kidd’s new varieties to reach the market. This variety had apparently all the good qualities of its parents and less of their defects. Mr. Green started that he was shown by Mr. Kidd about 100 seedling apple trees or 'known pedigree origin, about fifty of which were fruiting for the first time this year. It was interesting, he stated, to watch the development of habit, leaf and fruit in those new creations. In some instances they greatly resembled one or other of the parents and in other cases showed little similarity. Several of the new seedlings, now fruiting fur the first time this year, were developing characteristics which indicated good type, hardiness, free cropping and other valuable qualities. Others no doubt would have to be discarded after further testing. Fruit hybridisation was a work in which Mr. Kidd had long taken a deep interest. It was necessarily slow, but that did not mean that it was uninteresting or nationally unprofitable. Practically all the valuable varieties they had to-day were the result of years of patient hybridisation, selection and research.

Another work in which Mr. Kidd was doing a national service was selecting and growing to type the Danial’s September black currant. It was found that several cases of serious reversion had occurred in his stock. Some ripened their fruit much earlier than the standard variety, others were soft, while still other plants maintained the true characteristics which made the late fruiting variety so valuable. Plants of the very best type had been selected, grown on and from these a strain was being propagates! These plants would be of undoubted pedigree. The importance of this work, which required time, interest and knowledge to develop, said Mr. Green, could easily be visualised by the most casual observer. Men of Mr. Kidd’s painstaking character, he said, were of great value -to the community. (An interview with Mr. Green en horticultural matters generally appears on page 7.)