The Twentieth Century


Philippines, several million young cinchona trees were raised
at Glenn Dale, Maryland, and later flown to Latin America.
Thus the cinchona returned to the western hemisphere. It had
been discovered in 1852 in Peru by the Dutch botanist Hasskarl
and sent to tropical Asia for cultivation.
 The abaca, a banana-like Manila fiber plant, was planted in
the Americas on a commercial scale for the first time during
World War II. Corn strains came from Argentina, oat species
from Uruguay, and a number of grasses, legumes, and varieties
of opium poppy came from below the equator.
 Dissemination of new plants was effected through field stations
and by correspondence with individuals as well as by special
agreements with experiment stations, superintendents of city
parks, and private experimenters. Plant quarantines were tight-
ened, and laboratory facilities increased to handle specimens.
 Facilities for receiving introductions in 1944 consisted of the
original stations at Glenn Dale, Maryland, the station at Savan-
nah, Georgia, devoted to oriental crops including bamboos and
chestnuts, and another at Coconut Grove, Florida. The Florida
station has one of the largest permanent collections of living
subtropical and tropical species and varieties in the western
hemisphere. A fourth station at Chico, California, maintains
collections of deciduous fruits, and such trees and shrubs as
prefer the warm-arid climate of the west coast.

 INVENTORY OF INTRODUCTIONS
 In recent years, between three and four thousand items have
been inventoried annually by the Office of Seed and Plant Intro-
duction. Approximately 180,000 introductions have been recorded
since the establishment of the Office. Table 8 shows an estimate
made by Galloway in 1928 of the number of varieties of fruit
crops inventoried by the Office.
 The Department of Agriculture also maintains a large collec-
tion of important crop seeds to meet the demands for breeding
materials. In 1945 this collection included 8,500 strains or varie-
ties of wheat, 4,000 of barley, 1,000 rice, 400 flax, and sorghum
and corn about 300 each.
 The Research and Marketing Act of 1946 represented a signi-
ficant development in plant work. It provided funds for a federal-
state cooperative program of exploration, introduction, and test-