Abstract

The President of this section last year made a departure from the usual custom of confining the address to a branch of the subject he was most familiar with and gave instead an address on a general review of the progress of agri- culture. I shall, however, revert to the usual practice. Last year's address had a large portion of it devoted to the value and care of seed. It is probably in the fitness of things that my address deals with the problem of search for, and pro- duction of seed with inherent superior characteristics. I shall make a general survey of the plant breeding and genetical work in India and in doing so, refer largely to two crops, rice and cotton, with which I am most familiar. Scientific breeding with crop plants has become a powerful and indispensable tool for making agriculture more efficient and more flexible in meeting new demands and supplying the needs of men for food and raw material. "In the realm of living things with which agriculture deals, the work of the breeder is comparable to the work of the inventor in the realm of inanimate things with which industry deals, and his work pays in the same way that invention pays by replacing continuously the old by the new or making possible what was not possible before". The growing of improved types involves no additional expense to the cultivator and the work of breeding improved types has formed an impor tant plank in the activities of the agricultural departments right from the very beginning.

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