certain desired combination, if we know the characters concerned to be simple unit characters.
The study of hybrids has been resolved into a study of unit characters and their relation to each other. By hybridizing related types having opposed characters and observing the segregations which occur in the later generations, we analyze the characters of each type and determine when we have a character pair. The researches on this subject by Mendel, Bateson, Davenport, Castle, Punnett, Shull, Hurst, Correns, Tschermak, East and dozens of other now well-known investigations, have developed a science of heredity of which we had no conception a few years ago.
We can now study the characters presented by the different varieties of a plant or of different species, which can be crossed with it and definitely plan the combination of characters desired in an ideal type, and can with considerable confidence estimate the number of plants it will be necessary to grow to get this combination. We now know in general how characters behave in segregation and inheritance so that we can go about the fixation of a desired type, when one is secured, in an orderly and intelligent way.
The farther the study of characters is carried the more we are coming to realize that the appearance of apparently new types following hybridization is due to recombinations of different units which in their reactions give apparently new characters. As an illustration, in a study of pepper hybrids which I have carried on during the past four years it has become evident that the form of plant and branching is due to three pairs of characters or allelomorphs; namely, first, erect or horizontal branches; second, large or small branches; and third, many or few branches. In crossing two medium-sized races, one with large, horizontal and few branches, and the other with small, erect and numerous branches, there result many new combinations of characters, among which appear some with small, horizontal and few branches, which gives a dwarf plant, and others will have a combination of large, erect and numerous branches, which gives a giant plant. These dwarfs on the one hand and giants on the other, appear as distinct, new creations, though they are very evidently merely the recombinations of already existing unit characters, and dwarfness and giantness are the results of the reaction of the different units combined.
When we remember the large number of distinct characters which are presented by the very numerous varieties of any of our cultivated plants, we arrive at an understanding of the possibilities of improvement which the field of hybridization affords, yet I doubt if many of us have even then an adequate conception of the possibilities. Possibly I may make this more clear by an illustration from my timothy breeding experiments. While the various characters presented by the different types under observation have not been carefully studied in inheritance, the following characters can be distinguished plainly, and from observations on accidental hybrids are known to segregate. The following is a list of 28 such character pairs which it is believed will prove to be allelomorphs.
TIMOTHY CHARACTER PAIRS
- Heads
- Long or short.
- Thick or thin.
- Dense or lax.
- Greenish or purple when young.
- Gray or tawny when ripe.
- Simple or branched.
- Erect or nodding.
- Continuous or interrupted.
- Apex blunt or pointed.
- Base blunt or attenuated.
- Seeds large or small.
