70 REPORT OF THE AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH 



showing that the cotton came from Broach and Surat. 

 The two cotton varieties Broach deshi and ghoghari grown 

 in the latter two districts are quite suitable to the tract, 

 but it is absolutely necessary for the cultivators to main- 

 tain the purity of the seed. The growing practice of 

 separating seed from the fibre in ginning factories, 

 instead of as formerly by hand gins, has tended to injure 

 the quality by mixing the seed. The average farmer gets 

 his seed haphazard from the general supply at the ginning 

 factory, good, bad, early, late, medium, tall, bushy and 

 ordinary varieties all mixed. There can be no improve- 

 ment, unless the seed is at least equal to the average of 

 the previous crop. The improvement by selection of seed 

 continued from year to year, is most important. If care- 

 ful selection of seed is practised, and if the cultivator 

 takes the trouble to handgin his seed at home, there is 

 hope that the lint will be improved in quality and that 

 the outturn per acre will also increase. In selecting the 

 seed, cotton should be picked from the best sound bolls of 

 large, healthy plants of branching habit of growth, each 

 plant having a large number of bolls. Of the two varieties 

 now growing in these districts the Broach deshi variety 

 is the standard, and at present its price in the Bombay 

 market rules that of all other cottons of India. 



Kathiawar accounts for more than one-third of the 

 total area under cotton in the Bombay Presidency (exclud- 

 ing Sind). Formerly wagad and lalio, two varieties of 

 nearly the same quality as Broach (though picked less 

 carefully, and, on that account, fetching a lower price), were 

 the only ones found in Kathiawar, but on account of the 

 succession of years of irregular rainfall, beginning with 

 the famine year of 1900, they have been largely replaced 

 by two inferior coarse varieties mathio and navesari (not 

 Navasari) from Central India which give good yields, 

 mature early and can be grown without much risk in 

 years of scanty rainfall. 



Durimi the month of October, 1908, the Cotton 

 Specialist visited the Punjab, Sind, Rajputana, Centrai 



