DURANGO COTTON IN THE IMPERIAL VALLEY. 21 



the plants are usually killed to the ground in the fall, the roots remain 

 alive and send up new shoots in the spring from subterranean buds. 

 If a determined effort is to be made to place the growing of cotton 

 in the Imperial Valley on a Durango basis one of the first steps should 

 be to eradicate all the plants of other varieties from the fields as well 

 as those that are now scattered about like weeds in many neighbor- 

 hoods. An escaped cotton plant is much more dangerous than any 

 ordinary weed. The contamination of a select variety is not a merely 

 temporary injury, but may take years of careful selection to eliminate. 

 In view of the obvious danger of contamination from the over- 

 wintered plants or from volunteers that spring up from scattered 

 seed of the previous season, it is certainly inadvisable to plant Du- 

 rango cotton on any land where cotton was grown the year before. 

 Neglect of this precaution and that of separate ginning of the seed 

 planted in the season of 1912 has resulted in a contamination of 

 nearly all of the Durango seed in the Imperial Valley, which is now 

 recognized as a serious loss to the community. The present stock 

 of seed will need to be discarded and replaced by new supplies of 

 select seed that are being brought in from Texas. But any pure 

 stock will soon become contaminated if other kinds of cotton are 

 allowed to grow in adjacent fields or along borders or ditch banks, 

 where volunteer plants are often found. 



CONCLUSIONS. 



The Durango cotton is a new type introduced and acclimatized by 

 the Department of Agriculture and recommended in 1911 as the 

 Upland long-staple variety best suited to irrigated conditions in the 

 Southwestern States. Further experimental and field plantings in 

 1912 have rendered the superiority of the new type still more ap- 

 parent. 



Excellent results have been secured in numerous plantings of the 

 Durango variet}' in the Imperial Valley in 1912. The superiority of 

 the new type has become still more apparent and is recognized by the 

 local cotton-growing community, which is now making an organized 

 effort to place the valley exclusively on a Durango basis. 



The superiority of the Durango variety lies in the fact that it com- 

 bines the desirable cultural qualities of short-staple varieties with 

 length and strength of lint formerly obtained only from the so-called 

 Peeler varieties of the Delta region of Mississippi and Louisiana. All 

 the experiments indicate that the Durango cotton is much better 

 adapted to the Imperial Valley conditions than any other long- 

 staple Upland variety. 



The idea of transferring the Delta varieties to the Imperial Valley 

 is impracticable. Experiments have shown that these varieties are 



[Cir. Ill] 



