52 HINDI COTTON IN EGYPT. 



Hindi characters are prepotent, over the Egyptian, like the Upland 

 characters in the later generations of Egyptian-Upland hybrids. 



Breeding experiments have shown that it is possible to secure a' 

 much higher degree of uniformity in Arizona than now exists in 

 most of the cotton fields in Egypt. xVttention to the external charac- 

 ters enables the Hindi cotton and other undesirable variations to be 

 removed from the fields before the flowers open and hence before 

 cross-fertilization becomes possible. If reasonable care be used in 

 maintaining the uniformity of these types, it does not appear that 

 the American-grown Egyptian cotton is likely to suffer any com- 

 mercial disadvantage on the gi'ound of lack of uniformity in com- 

 parison with the Egyptian crop, even though we do not go to the 

 expense of establishing large ginning establishments where the cotton 

 is laboriously sorted by hand. 



The greater popularity of the brown-linted varieties of Egyptian 

 cotton may be explained by the advantage that the color gives in 

 sorting out the inferior Avhite Hindi fiber. The exclusion of the 

 Hindi cotton by a more efficient system of selection will enable white 

 varieties to be grown in Arizona and thus produce longer and stronger 

 fiber than brown varieties are likely to afford. A study of many 

 variations and hybrids of the Egyptian cotton shows a distinct 

 tendency for the brown color to be associated with short fibers. 



It is possible that the reversions to the Hindi characters may con- 

 tinue to appear in small numbers, even in carefully selected stocks, 

 as in analogous naked-seeded variations occasionally found in uni- 

 form carefully selected varieties of Upland cotton. Nevertheless, 

 experiments indicate that such revei-sions to the Hindi characters are 

 not likely to interfere with the development and preservation of uni- 

 form strains of Egyptian cotton in the United States if the proper 

 methods of sokn^tion are applied. 



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