MAGANLAL L. PATEL 119 
Ill. THE IDEAL TYPE OF herbacewm COTTON FoR LowER GUJARAT. 
Although the climate and soil conditions are sufficiently varying to make 
it probable that strains of cotton with somewhat different characters will 
furnish the best and most profitable types of cotton for different areas in 
Lower Gujarat, yet thereare certain: features, which our inquiries reveal 
which ought to be possessed by a cotton plant, which can be considered, 
as in any way satisfactory in any part of the area specified. These 
characters we shall have to describe, but before doing so, it is perhaps 
necessary to insist on two or three preliminary considerations. 
It goes without saying, in fact, that any plant which is selected must be 
pure, and if possible consist of a pure line. This necessity has never really 
been adequately realized by growers or by traders, and as a result we have 
at present a mixture of types everywhere, some of which are suitable to : 
the tract while some are not ; some give good staple cotton, some on the other 
hand are poor ; some give high, some low ginning percentage. Thus apart 
from any regular mixture of the three varieties previously noted, we have 
very extensive admixture of strains of cotton everywhere, which are 
of extremely different agricultural and commercial value. We wish to 
insist on this point because it is often supposed that provided the Goghari and 
Wagad types are eliminated, the Broach deshi which remains will be uniform 
and of high quality. This is by no means the case, and it is necessary that 
there should be available definite pure strains of the best variety of cotton 
foreach tract which can be grown with certainty of the quality of the 
produce. This is not the case at present even when the so-called pure 
Navasari or Surat staple cotton is grown. 
The second necessity of an ideal type of cottonis that the staple and 
ginning percentage should be as high as possible, consistent with a good yield 
of kapas. Up to the present, the possession of good staple has been con- 
sidered as likely to occur with a cotton giving a poor ginning out-turn and 
generally poor yield in the field. All the definite evidence, however, would 
seem to indicate that there is no necessary connection between high staple 
and either low ginning percentage or low yield. With regard to the latter 
point an experiment was made in 1908-09! of transferring large quantities of 
Broach deshi seed from Navsari to Ahmedabad for cultivation. This, though 
the best stapled seed in the province, is in its own homea very low 
yielder, but at Ahmedabad it proved to be equal to local types of Broach 
deshi in this respect. Its ginning percentage remained lower than that of 
1 Annual Report, Surat Agricultural Station, 1908-09, p. 62, 
