Plantbreeding at Svalöf - continued...

As already mentioned, the association, at its foundation, also had the task to distribute the grains it tested for good to the market. This had the consequence that a large part of the area at the experimental station was used for the mass production of seed. The Association did effectively not do anything different from any other commercial plant breeding company. It was only with the foundation of a separate and independent joint-stock company in March 1891 – which alone should be responsible for the selling of seed raised at the experimental station at Svalöv, and which, as a matter of course, had exclusive access to this material – that the necessary space was opened to realise the type collection Nilsson envisioned. Correspondingly, Neergard's principles – to better those strains that had already proved to be the best, rather than collecting all sorts of strains – could only be 'thrown over board' after that institutional change had come about. As a matter of fact, Neergard left his directorship in protest against this change, which he viewed as going against the interest of commercial plant breeders and farmers, the clients he felt himself obliged to (Neergaard 1890).

There was another change occurring at Svalöv with Nilsson's directorship: While Neergard could be content with proving that he had achieved yield increases in each of the annual reports he delivered to the Association, Nilsson's method was in need of records that allowed to observe the development of individual 'types' comparatively and over successive generations (Welinder 1891: 7). This was provided by a system of records that consisted of three elements: a 'journal of analysis', that recorded the results of comparative tests for yield potential of different strains; 'descent cards (härstamningskort)', i. e. annual lists of which strains had been cultivated on which parcels; and finally, 'field books (fältböcker)', in which a number of observations on each cultivated strain was put down for each year. The latter two together were called 'register (stambok)', in analogy to a family register. The journal of analysis was mainly used to decide which strains were to be passed over to the joint-stock company for marketing, and mainly consisted of tables recording chemical and biological properties as measured in the laboratory. The register had a more complicated structure, that I want to explain in some detail in the following.