The Application of Scientific Methods to the Improvement of the Sugar Beet

Abstract

AN important memoir on the production of improved seeds of the sugar beet is published by M. E. Schribaux in the Bulletin de la Société d'Encouragement.¹ The memoir gives one of the best accounts that has vet appeared of the methods of selection which have proved so successful in improving the quality of the sugar beet during the past fifty years. It is to these improvements that the remarkable growth of the beet sugar industry is largely due. They provide an admirable illustration of what can be effected by applying rigorous scientific methods to agricultural practice and industry on the large scale, and demonstrate scientific control pushed to a limit which only a few years back would have been regarded as impracticable or even impossible. This can be best appreciated when it is stated that in selecting the best beet roots to be used as seed-producers, every single root which appears suitable on morphological or other grounds is subjected to chemical analysis. Often more than 3000 roots are analysed each day; for this purpose a staff of three men, assisted by ten women or children, is necessary, and the price of each analysis works out at about four centimes.