Grape-breeding

Chance, pure and simple, has been the greatest factor in the

production of varieties of American grapes. From the millions of wild

plants, an occasional grape of pre-eminent merit has caught the eye of

the cultivator and has been brought into the vineyard to be the

progenitor of a new variety. Or in the vineyards, more often in

near-by waste lands, from the prodigious number of seedlings that

spring up, pure or cross-b ed, a plant of merit becomes the foundation

of a new variety. An interesting fact in the domestication of the four

chief species of American grapes is that none came under cultivation

until forms of them, striking in value, had been found. Catawba,

representing the Labrusca grapes; the Scuppernong, the Rotundifolias;

Norton, from Vitis aestivalis; Delaware and Herbemont from the

Bourquiniana grapes; and Clinton from Vitis vulpina, are, after a

century, scarcely excelled, although in each species there are now

many new varieties.



That our best grapes have come from chance is not because of a lack of

human effort to produce superior varieties. Of all fruits, the grape

has received most attention in America from the generation of

plant-breeders just passing. Grape-breeders have produced 2000 or more

varieties, a medley of the heterogeneous characters of a dozen

species. That so many of this vast number are worthless is due more to

a lack of knowledge of plant-breeding than to a lack of effort, for

the order and system in plant-breeding that now prevail, disclosed by

recent brilliant discoveries, were unknown to grape-breeders of the

last century.