Excerpt from Improvement in the Chemical Composition of the Corn Kernel

Preliminary - Before the work. Reported in this bulletin could be begun, it was necessary to make a chemical study of the corn plant, and to devise methods for conducting experiments with the object of improving the composition of the grain. It is known that the min eral content of plants can be changed to some extent by the addition to the soil of mineral materials in a form readily available to the plant, but that the temporary change thus effected would have any appreciable hereditary tendency seems very unlikely. The method of procedure which seemed most promising is based upon the common method of making improvement in animals, namely, selecting the best examples of the desired type and breeding successively and under the best conditions from that stock, retaining from each generation only the highest types obtained. This is practically the method by which the sugar content of certain varieties of beets has been increased from less than five per cent. To twelve or even to sixteen per cent. A small portion of a beet is analyzed and, if it is found to be sufficiently rich in sugar, the beet is then set out as a mother, or seed, beet. From the seed produced beets are grown and another selection of seed beets is made on the basis of their sugar content. But the kernel of corn is not sufficient in quantity to make a complete chemical analysis by any practical method, and cer tainly the same kernel could not be used for analysis and also for seed.

Early in the year 1896 the writer began a special study of the chemistry of corn. Although, in the latter part of that year, all of the analytical records of the work were destroyed by fire, some valuable knowledge of the subject had been obtained. Among the important facts which the results obtained had indicated were.

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