A new strain developed at the Shafter, Calif., Experiment Station yields fiber 50 percent stronger than the variety now widely grown in that area. Another, developed at State College, N. Mex., is 35 percent stronger than other local strains. Other good, strong strains are being perfected elsewhere and will go into production when they have been proved well adapted and better than common varieties in yield, resistance to diseases, insects, and so on. In the photo at left, J. B. Dick of the Stoneville, Miss., station, studies the characteristics of new varieties of cotton.

The place where cotton is grown also affects its quality. Tests have demonstrated that the variety of cotton that produced the strongest yarn when grown at Florence, S. C., also produced the strongest yarn when grown at Stoneville, Miss., and College Station, Tex. Likewise, the kinds that produce weak yarn at one location will produce weak yarn when grown elsewhere.

In order to get mass production of the better varieties of cotton, a one-variety community plan was initiated by the Department some years ago under which large supplies of seed are made available to all growers in a community or area. All growers in a neighborhood agree to plant the same kind of cotton so that the community gin (below) can limit its operations to the adopted variety. Thus, there is no mixing of seed or lint at the gin; it is easy to maintain pure seed stocks and at the same time supply a large volume of uniform cotton. In 1945, over 51/2 million acres of the more than 7 million acres in one-variety production were limited to only four types.

Breeders of cottonseed are also cooperating in the one-variety program. They are reducing the number placed on the market and sometimes keep the original variety names even when the kind is improved.

Another step toward reducing the number of varieties is the breeding of new high-yielding strains of medium-length staple, good spinning quality, and equal adaptation to wilt or non-wilt soils. Thus, the same variety can be used for standardized production in much larger areas than heretofore in the eastern area,

regardless of the presence of wilt; higher yields and better cotton are produced.

Almost 40 percent of our acreage and than 45 percent of the production in 1945 in one-variety communities. As communities combined into larger areas growing a single of cotton, the cotton trade and manufacturers can obtain increasingly large pure lots at. cotton of the same variety. In Georgiaand Alabama, where careful estimates have been made, the extra income to growers above h,, they make under usual methods averages up to $11 an acre.

The cotton breeding work of the Department is under the direction of H. W. Barre, head of the Division of Cotton Crops and Diseases, Bureau of Plant Industry, Soils, and Agricultural Engineering. Other phases of this important American crop are being studied in the Department and elsewhere—marketing of cotton, for example, the pests that attack it new uses, fertilization, and economics of cotton production.