(Applause.)
Nut Varieties: A Round Table Discussion
H. L. CRANE, Chairman
DR. CRANE: Mr. President, members of the Northern Nut Growers' Association: I think it is, without a question of doubt, of the greatest importance that we consider this question of varieties. After all, a variety of any plant, in my opinion—which I think can be well supported—is the most important thing that anyone can consider when it comes to planting or developing a nut tree or a fruit tree or anything in the fruit line. We can cultivate and fertilize and spray and do everything that is needed to be done today in a modern fruit or nut orchard farm, but if the variety is not suited to the climate, if it is not a good variety, all our efforts that we make towards developing a good tree and bringing it into fruiting are wasted.
I know that every one of you appreciates old varieties of corn and just what has been done in our new varieties of hybrid corn, how hybrid corn has changed the variety situation. Now it's hybrid this and hybrid that, because hybrid varieties are generally superb.
Now, at this time in our nut work we are a long way yet from growing good hybrid varieties, and I feel that there has been an effort on the part of a lot of people to capitalize on the word "hybrid," because hybrid corn has been such a success; and we figured that by carrying it over into other plants, particularly the nut trees, we would get the same remarkable performance from hybrid nuts that we do from hybrid corn. But that is not the case.
We will come to that some day in the future, maybe—not in our lifetime, but we will have hybrid varieties, because, after all, our great improvements that have come in most of our plants, in corn and in wheat, and in other plants, have come through the mixing of the genes, or the characters that we have differing between species.
In our nuts, now, with the exception of hicans, we are still dealing with pure species, and most, if not quite all, of our hicans are worthless at the present time, largely because of sterility.
A good variety is the most outstanding thing that a horticulturist can get or can have, because of the fact that it does have the character in it which will make good growth. It will set a lot of nuts, it will carry them through to maturity and it fills them, and if a variety doesn't do that, it's not a good variety. Then after we get the nuts filled, cracking quality, eating quality or oil content, and all these things come next.
Now, this brings us next to the very important consideration of how are we going to get a new good variety? Well, we can do that by selecting from seedling nuts, or we can make controlled pollinations, crossing different varieties, or varieties of different species, planting the nuts or growing new trees and then selecting out of them those that have the desirable characters.