NATURAL INDIGO 



By W. R. G. ATKINS, O.B.E., Sc.D., F.I.C. 

 Sometime Indigo Research Botanist to the Government oj India 



Much has been written of the brilliant chemical investigations 

 and their industrial applications which led to the synthesis of 

 indigo blue and to its production in such quantity and at such 

 a price as seriously to cripple the ancient method of preparing 

 it from various species of indigo plant. While great efforts 

 were being made in Germany to produce indigo — efforts which 

 involved much costly scientific research and the employment 

 of distinguished chemists — the Indian indigo industry preserved 

 the even tenor of its way much as it had done for centuries. 

 It is true that the planters, in Behar especially, systematised 

 its production and effected considerable improvements in its 

 manufacture and the purity of the product, but they were 

 just as much in the dark as to the chemical changes involved 

 and the factors influencing these changes as were the natives 

 of India who produced it in small scale concerns. 



When, however, the production of synthetic indigo was an 

 accomplished fact, and its price, uniform quality, and con- 

 venient make-up in the form of 20 per cent, paste, had seriously 

 cut into the prices obtained for natural indigo, the Behar 

 Planters' Association, subsidised by the Government of 

 Bengal, started investigations into the methods of growing 

 the indigo plant and of the manufacture of the dye. Had such 

 investigations been taken in hand earlier it is quite possible 

 that the synthetic product would never have been able to 

 emerge from the experimental stage. As is well known, how- 

 ever, its position was soon established, and up to the beginning 

 of the war its production and export were steadily reducing 

 or altogether inhibiting the production of the natural dye in 

 India, Java, China, and other countries. The story of the 

 decline — and almost the fall — of natural indigo has been out- 

 lined by W. A. Davis (Agric. Journ. of India, vol. xiii, Jan. 

 and April 191 8). 



Sirsiah Investigations. — ^The Planters' Association started 

 work at Mozafferpur in 1 898, and work was continued at other 

 stations under Rawson, Bloxam, Bergtheil, Parnell, and others 



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