from three to seven years.

CHAPTER XVI

Seed Breeding and Growing

The potentialities of every plant and its limitations are inherent,
fixed and immutable in the seed from which it is developed and are made
up of the balanced sum of the different tendencies it receives in
varying degree from each of its ancestors back for an indefinite number
of generations. A very slight difference in the character or the degree
of any one of the tendencies which go to make up this sum may make a
most material difference in the balance and so in the resulting
character of the plant produced. Different plants, even of the same
ancestry, vary greatly in prepotency or in the relative dominance of the
influence they have over descendants raised from seed produced by them.

In some cases all the plants raised from seed produced by a certain
plant will be essentially alike and closely resemble the seed-bearing
plant, while seed from another plant of the same parentage will develop
into plants differing from each other and seemingly more influenced by
some distant ancestor or by varying combinations of such influences than
of those of the plant which actually produced the seed from which they
were developed. Successful seed breeding can only be accomplished by
taking advantage of these principles of heredity and variation, and by a
wise use of them it is possible to produce seed which can be depended
upon to produce plants of any type possible to the species.

=The first essential for breeding= is to have a clear and exact
conception of precisely what, in all respects, the type shall be and
then the securing of seed which has come from plants of that exact
character for the greatest possible number of generations, carefully
avoiding the introduction by cross-pollination of tendencies from plants
differing in any degree from the desired type. Secondly, seed should be
used from plants which have been proven to produce seed, which will
develop into plants like themselves or are strongly prepotent. A
practical way to accomplish this in the tomato is as follows:

By experiment and observation form a very clear conception of precisely
the type of plant and fruits which is best suited to your needs. This
may be done by the study of available descriptions of sorts, by
conference with those who have had experience in your own or similar
climatic and soil conditions and in raising fruit for the same purposes
and, best of all, by trials o