At this point I wish to make a suggestion as to one thing that this association, as an association, and perhaps some of its members as individuals, can give some attention to as a part of your program in the years to come. It is the job of breeding superior varieties of nuts, because much improvement is called for in walnuts, hickories, and the other kinds before they are all that you or the consuming public wants of them. The situation is essentially the same with nuts as with other fruit and ornamental plants. We have some pretty good peaches, but ten years from now the producers in Michigan will be growing very few of the varieties that they are growing today, and I dare say that twenty-five years from now they will be growing hardly any of them. We have some very attractive delphiniums and dahlias, but in 1950 few of today's favorites will be in cultivation. They will be superseded by new and superior varieties. In 1950, or 1975, we should be growing nut varieties that are far superior to what is available at the present time.
To say that there is room for much improvement sounds all right, but who is going to effect it? Nut trees are not the easiest things in the world to grow. They require a long time to come into bearing, and it is almost out of the question for a person of middle age to undertake a breeding project with a crop like the black walnut or northern hickory and expect to get anywhere. Even if an Experiment Station undertakes a problem of this kind, there is the likelihood that it may be dropped before much will have been accomplished, for the person who starts it may go somewhere else or be compelled to divert his attention to something else, while the person who succeeds him has no interest in the project. That has happened time and time again with investigations of many kinds, but it has been particularly true of breeding projects.
If we are ever to make any real progress in the breeding of nuts, one of the first things we need to know is the value of the different materials with which we have to work and the varieties that are used as parents. The Stabler, Thomas and Ohio are relatively superior black walnuts, but we do not know which is the best of these for breeding for size or vigor of tree or productivity or quality of nut or any other quality. We haven't the slightest idea. Yet before really scientific plant breeding work can be initiated, there is need of information as to which of these can be depended on for transmitting to its offspring certain specific qualities. Through experiment and experience we have learned some of these things with regard to some of the other fruit and ornamental crops. For instance, we know that the J. H. Hale is not only a wonderful variety in itself, but that it has the ability to produce superior progeny. Certain other varieties lack this ability. So, doubtless, it is with nuts. How are we to obtain this information? If your Association could get two or three growers, say here in Michigan, to inbreed the Stabler walnut and grow the resulting seedlings—perhaps a thousand in number—to fruiting age and someone somewhere else to do the same with the Thomas and with the Ohio and other varieties, it would not be long before a body of information would be collected that would furnish a definite basis for the scientific breeding of nuts. Incidentally, the chances are that some of this first group of seedlings would be superior and I believe that the chances are better than 50-50 that the resulting nut orchard would be a fairly good one.
Where are you going to get these inbred seeds? That probably is what you can put up to your experiment stations. For instance, I am inclined to think that Mr. Neilson, if he found out that there is a member of this organization that is willing to grow a hundred inbred seedlings of the Stabler or Thomas to maturity, would undertake to hand-pollenize the flowers for that number of seeds, you would have a start in the direction of developing superior varieties of nuts. I don't mean to say that by undertaking a thing like this you should pay less attention to looking for native trees that are superior, but your problem now, and for the next thirty years, with northern nuts, is one of materials and the method of procedure that I have suggested would put it on a basis of a fairly definite breeding project.
The President:
I think it is self-evident that this association came here to Battle Creek for its convention this year principally because of the work that has been started by the Michigan State College. We think that the states and the national government ought to do just what you are doing here, and the power of the association is going to be back of those projects in the future. To our sorrow, and I'd say to the loss of the entire nation, several very valuable plantings have been started and the passing of the owner has made it necessary that they be abandoned, and in some cases lost entirely; in others a few of the trees have been transplanted. We feel that if these specimen trees can be maintained on state and national property, it will serve to call attention to this nation's potential resources, which are not appreciated at present.
The 1934 Ohio Black Walnut Contest
By Carl F. Walker, Cleveland Heights, Ohio
The first prize contest confined to the state of Ohio to discover superior seedling black walnuts was conducted in the fall of 1933 by the Ohio members of the Northern Nut Growers' Association in co-operation with the farm paper, the Ohio Farmer. The original announcement was made in mid-September and several follow-up articles were published, including some illustrations. Further publicity was obtained by mailing press copy to the rural newspapers throughout the state.