INDIGOFERA 



Stock Improvement 



THE INDIGO PLANT 



Improvement. 



Present 

 Position. 



Practical 

 Monopoly. 



Dye-forming 

 Power. 



it can be stated that all the improvements I indicated as necessary have 

 been carefully and persistently tried, and that still natural indigo cannot 

 be made to pay, I shall with great regret have to admit that I have been 

 wrong." 



There would seem no doubt that each one of the conditions of improve- 

 ment indicated by Sir Edward are of vital importance ; and what is more 

 to the point, hardly any of them have been successfully and completely 

 investigated. A considerable advance would appear to have been attained 

 recently by Bloxam, in his chemical studies of the dye. Leake com- 

 menced research into the races of the plant grown and the localisation 

 of the dye within the plant tissue, but his studies were brought to a sudden 

 termination, when on the threshold of possible practical results, through 

 the severance of his connection with the Indigo Planters' Association. 

 It is understood that a start has also been made by the new research station 

 under the direction of the Inspector-General of Agriculture, from which 

 much may indeed be expected in the future. The planters themselves, 

 in their anxiety for alternative crops to be grown on the land when not 

 under indigo, are concerned with an issue of great practical value. 



Leake has obligingly furnished for this work a review of his 

 own results and those of other workers in the path of indigo-plant 

 improvement, the passages from which will be indicated by quotation 

 marks. 



Present Position of the Industry. " It may be affirmed that the 

 methods employed for the production of the dye are very crude. The 

 fluctuations in the daily outturn are very large, and all attempts to con- 

 trol the yield have so far proved unavailing, if not prejudicial. This is 

 only one way of confessing our ignorance of the steps of the process. So 

 long as the planting community enjoyed a practical monopoly this in- 

 ability to control was of little moment. A fall in the quantity of dye 

 produced implied a corresponding rise in price. With the introduction 

 of the synthetic product a short yield no longer meant enhanced price, and 

 this fact, associated with a series of bad seasons, has reduced the margin of 

 profit to a vanishing point. If natural indigo is to compete successfully 

 with its synthetic rival, there is no longer room for the losses which the 

 fluctuations above noticed necessarily involve. A study of the manufac- 

 ture of indigo reveals how little at present is known of the chemical and 

 bacterial changes involved. Until these have been worked out, little can 

 be hoped for from improvements in the methods pursued. One fact 

 alone is evident, namely that only a fraction of the latent dye- forming 

 power is developed. 



" For the present, therefore, the planters must look elsewhere to find 

 relief from the severe competition of the synthetic product. The two lines 

 that suggest themselves and which are, to a small extent, receiving atten- 

 tion, are the introduction of supplementary crops and the increase in the 

 yield of plant per acre (cultivation) as opposed to the increase in the yield 

 of dye per unit of plant (manufacture). The first of these falls outside the 

 province of this article. The second falls naturally under two heads (1) 

 improvement of the present plant I. swmatrana by seed control, etc. ; 

 (2) introduction of other and richer stocks. 



" (1) For the same reason that the mahai (indigo manufacture) cannot 

 profitably be altered at the present time, it is also impossible to progress 

 in any process of selection of stock, and, as long as it remains impossible 



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