Excerpt from Coconut Culture
As the third most important crop in the Philippine Islands the coconut deserves more and better attention from the planter than it now receives. It is safe to say that our production of copra could be augmented by one-third without increasing the crop area if the present cultural methods were duly improved; this means that some five million pesos are lost every year through carelessness and bad practice. To assist the planter in avoiding some of the common mistakes and hence to increase the profits of this crop the following recommendations are offered.
In the selection of the seed for the nursery three points must be borne in mind: first, the seeds should be taken only from such trees in the plantation as are known to bear well and regularly and to be of the very best variety; second, the nuts should be completely matured; third, the nuts should be so picked as to avoid the danger of cracking the shell or injuring the embryo, or "eye." It is not necessarily the tree which happens to have the most fruits at the moment, but the one which always has a large number of bunches in various stages of growth that should be selected for propagation; in this respect there is a greater amount of individuality in coconut trees than is generally believed. The ripe bunch of seed nuts should be lowered to the ground with a cord instead of allowing them to fall. One or two at the tip of the bunch are usually unfit for seed. A roundish nut is preferable to an oblong one. The largest nuts do not always contain the most "meat." In short, then, the planter should be as cautious in selecting his seed as he would be in choosing animals for breeding purposes.
There are two or three distinct varieties of coconuts cultivated - usually intermingled - on most of the plantations. Several others occur here and there about the Islands. Each estate should have a few trees of every variety procurable growing in a sort of experimental field where the comparative merits of each kind can be studied.
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