PROGRESS WITH NEW VARIETIES OF HOPS

The breeding of high quality wilt‐tolerant varieties is based on the selection of improved male parents, combined with the use of polyploidy to increase the influence of the female parents on the seedlings. The use of tetraploid monoecious plants as male parents should eliminate one of the main difficulties of hop breeding—the unknown quality characteristics of normal male plants. Recent investigations have suggested that seedless hops may be desirable for lager brewing because they have much higher oil contents than seeded samples of the same variety. Triploid hops do not appear to have higher oil contents than diploids in spite of their low seed contents. The breeding of lager hops suitable for growing under English conditions may be more difficult than was anticipated.