The Commercial Production Of Hybrid Corn Seed

Author : Funk Brothers Seed Company
Publisher : Forgotten Books
ISBN 13 : 9780266758686
Total Pages : 24 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (586 download)

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Download or read book Funk Farms, Birthplace of Commercial Hybrid Corn written by Funk Brothers Seed Company and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2017-10-26 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Funk Farms, Birthplace of Commercial Hybrid Corn: A History of Hybrid Corn At the opening of the twentieth century attention of corn breeders was focused on ear type. In this heyday of what he contemptuously called the ten pretty ears, Mr. Funk was not only the largest commercial seed corn grower but the lead ing critic of contemporary corn selection methods. Mr. Funk early recognized that appearance of an ear of corn was no guarantee of its seed value. Funk Brothers maintained a large exhibit at the St. Louis Louisiana Exposition in 1904 to demon strate that the popular show type of corn was not sound from the farmer's standpoint. With James Reid (developer of Reid's Yellow Dent) Mr. Funk set himself squarely against the then-popular rough starchy corn of late maturity, low vitality and inferior root development that was taking the blue ribbons at corn shows. The result was develop ment of Funk's Utility Type Corn smoother, medium dent, faster growth, firmer and more solid ears. Another decade was to pass before farmers generally, following the lead of experiment stations and farm bureaus, endorsed the utility ear. Meanwhile Gene Funk had gone on to newer fields. He abandoned ordinary ear selection entirely to develop on a commercial scale a new system of corn improvement. For, in disapproving the value of the Ten Pretty Ears, Mr. Funk repudiated the whole principle of selection simply from either the ear or plant. The trouble with seed selection, he found, was that while the ear itself came from a good plant and carried desirable characters it would not reproduce those characters unless fertilized by pollen from equally desirable plants. In other words. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.