In the summer of 1951 there were 22 expeditions of botanists, zoologists and soil 

 workers distributed in the Kara Kum desert, and a party of zoologists from the Turk- 

 menian Academy of Sciences has travelled about 2500 miles in the valleys of the 

 Atrek, Sumbar and Chandir rivers. I discussed the work of these parties with some of 

 their members and saw some of their material being worked upon in their laboratories. 

 An intensive 2 years of field work has preceded the actual building of desert dams and 

 canals, in the same way that the data collected by the pre-war scientific expeditions 

 to the region between the Volga and the Ural rivers has been utilised in planning the 

 irrigation in progress there. Each group working in the Kara Kum desert comprised 12 

 to 20 persons coming from all over the Soviet Union, besides from the young academies 

 of sciences and universities of the central Asian states. 



Seeds of certain plants which are wanted for the new pastures and meadows were 

 being collected, and surveys were being made of the native plants and animals. A 

 look-out is always kept for wild varieties that can be turned to economic use, as were 

 the rubber bearing Scorzonera tau- saghys and Taraxacum kok- saghys, 'dandelions' 

 found in the Tien Shan mountains in 1930 and 1931. These two species now provide 

 the major part of the rubber crop of the U.S.S.R. 



Ecological studies are stressed, and detailed work is carried on in selected 

 places, both virgin and in the oases. A few semi -permanent desert laboratories have 

 been set up for this work and for the soil analysis. I saw many cultures of soil micro- 

 organisms maintained in the Institute of Zoology at Tashkent. 



A large field of work before the expeditions and the laboratory workers concerns 

 parasites and pests in general. The normal pests and predators of desert trees, shrubs 

 and plants which are about to be grown on a large scale are being studied, rodents as 

 well as insects, so that any enormous increase in the numbers of these organisms 

 arising from the altered balance of nature may be dealt with immediately by appropria s 

 measures, and wholesale destruction avoided. 



Predators and parasites of domestic or potentially domestic animals are being in- 

 vestigated, and every opportunity is being taken to follow out the life cycles of flat- 

 worms axvd other parasites which inhabit two or more hosts. Information is being col- 

 lected concerning the species and habits of molluscan and other intermediate hosts. 

 The work associated with insect vectors of diseases of all kinds is as important here 

 as in other warm countries, and employs many persons. The incidence of malaria in 

 the oases is now low; I myself saw no mosquitos and I did not use the nets with which 

 I was provided. All slowly flowing irrigation channels dry out completely between 

 flooding which takes place every twelfth day for cotton. Gad-fly problems, they told 

 me, had been satisfactorily solved. Physiological work on domestic mammals occupies 

 many workers. 



The most important crop to be raised in Turkmenia will be cotton, with much wheat, 

 rice, dates, olives, fruit and plants producing rubber and essential oils. Cotton and 

 rice will also be grown in the Ukraine for the first time. The anticipated yields from 

 the whole of the new irrigation schemes include, in millions of tons: wheat 8, sugar 

 beet 6, cotton 3, rice Vi, together with 2 million head of cattle and 9 million head of 

 sheep. This represents food for a 100 million persons, besides the industrial crops. 



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