1. Breeding Experiments

Ordinary Brazilian corn is composed of extremely heterogeneous and hardly improved varieties. Many of them seem to be equal or even inferior to the corn still grown by "wild" Indians. Modern breeding work has been started at Campinas and at Piracicaba.

A - Sweet Corn (Pedigree breeding): Sweet corn is practically not grown in Brazil and the imported strains which we have been able to observe hardly survive for more than a few generations. Since I had been engaged, while in England, in breeding for earliness, the scope of the experiment had to be revised completely. Extracts from the cross: (Tirol (white flint) × Golden Bantam) × Banting (Canadian, white early) were crossed with "Santa Rosa" (white dent) and with "Cateto" (orange flint) and we have now obtained several good lines of yellow-orange and of white sweet corn, well adapted to field conditions and resisting the heavy rains and winds; with mean plant height (without tassel): 2 m., mean height of ear: 1.2 m., time from sowing to silking: 65 days, one or two ears per stalk, absence of tillers, mean ear weight (dry): 100 g.