Page:Tree Crops; A Permanent Agriculture (1929).pdf/95

 medium. The stage could scarcely be set better—cheap land, good for little else; an exotic plant; an old industry; the charm of the word California; the magic of distance, for swindles brighten as the miles increase. Comparatively few people get stuck by the industry around the corner.

There is little reason to believe that we are growing carobs of the best varieties obtainable. We are probably propagating nothing but chance seedlings. The slowness with which many of the best varieties come into bearing would indicate that proper breeding might produce much more precocious strains. Like many other trees they vary in resistance to cold—offering the possibility of more frost-resistant varicties.

The table of analyses on page 302 shows remarkable variation in content. See especially in that table the figures in No. 2201 and 2371, and the protein variation between the maximum and minimum of the whole bean (pods and seeds); these offer interesting possibilities of breeding carobs of special qualifications such as high in sugar for sugar manufacture or high in protein for milk-making and growth-making foods.

Carob improvement offers two lines of work:

(a) Crossing carobs.

(b) Hybridizing carobs with some of the numerous allied species, particularly some of the American mesquites and the South American algaroba (page 73), which have so much greater resistance to frost. A strain of the Hawaiian algaroba might add both precocity and productivity. This is work for individual enthusiasm, private endowments, and for state experiment stations supported by legislatures with vision. Where are these stations?