Investigation and Improvement of American Grapes at the Munson Experiment Grounds Near Denison, Texas, From 1876 to 1900 Page: 236
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TEXAS AGRICULTURAL, EXPERIMENT STATIONS.
I CHAPTER II.
Selecting Parent Varieties of Grapes.
At first thought, it seems a very simple and easy election to make, but'
when one learns by sad and expensive experience, involving years of nurs-
ing and solicitude, that he has been breeding weakness and producing only
food which disease will consume, by starting with inherently weak, non-
resistant parents, he becomes very cautious in undertaking to originate
more varieties. Better to study first the work of others who have made
known the errors which lead to failure.
Let a variety be taken for parent, no matter how beautiful and fine in
quality of fruit, which is puny, easily hurt by climatic changes and ex-
tremes, a prey of insect and fungus diseases, dropping easily from cluster,
skin easily cracking, non-productive, etc., and its progeny will bring forth
its weaknesses to the third, fourth, and even to the tenth generation.
By hybridizing with varieties, very strong in points where the other
HI parents are weak, the maladies can be somewhat counteracted, and much
more rapidly reduced than simply selecting the best generation after gen-
eration of pure seedlings.
How much more satisfactory, more economical of time, more profitable
to originator and planter, would it be to have the parentage on both sides
of the very best in constitution and productiveness as well as in quality !
THOROUGHBRED VINES.
While there are no truly thoroughbred varieties of grapes, or other
plants, as there are of domestic animals, yet no cause can be shown why
good results may not as well be obtained with grapes, so bred as with cat-
tle or horses. The nearest approach to a thoroughbred grape that I can
cite is the McPike, if its parentage is as reported, a seedling of Worden,
which is a seedling of Concord, which is a seedling of a good wild grape
of Massachusetts. But such a thoroughbred is very different in its gene-
alogy from a thoroughbred animal.
A true thoroughbred grape would be obtained by intercrossing Concord,
Ives, Perkins, Hartford and other distinct, select pure varieties of
Labrusca, and then perpetually intercrossing the progeny of each new gen-
eration, but avoiding direct "in and in" breeding as of Concord seedlings
upon Concord seedlings and these upon their pure progeny perpetually,
which would finally run out.
In the first and better sense we would have a true Labrusca breed, and
many other pure Labrusca breeds distinct from this could be established
by starting with another set of wild or distinct varieties. The second
would be a pure Concord breed.
But a better breed still, for grapes, seems to be made by starting with236
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Munson, T. V. (Thomas Volney), 1843-1913. Investigation and Improvement of American Grapes at the Munson Experiment Grounds Near Denison, Texas, From 1876 to 1900, pamphlet, 1900; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1353064/m1/57/: accessed July 7, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Grayson College Foundation.