COMMERCIAL DATE GROWING 45 



second-class and ordinary dates have no cause for 

 alarm," because "at present the inferior and badly 

 packed seedling dates produced in Mexico are the 

 poorest that reach our markets, and are of no import- 

 ance whatever." 



Conditions are similar in Spain. No dates are 

 exported, for the reason that they are not fit for 

 export. Scarcely two palms can be found that bear 

 fruit alike, and the general bad quality of it is by no 

 means wholly due to its climate. Although Spain 

 might easily grow all the dates it needs for its own 

 use, if the industry were on a scientific basis and 

 only desirable varieties perpetuated, it actually 

 imports large quantities of offshoot-grown dates 

 from the Tafilalet oases of Morocco, which supply all 

 the choice trade (at about twenty-five cents a pound), 

 while the local seedlings are sold at two or three cents 

 a pound, and find a difficult sale even at such prices. 



In India the industry is of very little importance, 

 the dates produced being small in quantity, and being 

 mainly sold in the villages where they are grown. 

 Practically all the dates on the market are imported 

 from the Persian Gulf, where the trees are all grown 

 from offshoots, and D. Milne, director of date growing 

 experiments in the Panjab,* says that the best of the 

 native fruit is inferior to the worst of the imported. 

 A generation ago a movement was started to make 

 India a great date-growing country, through seedlings. 

 Many of these were grown, but the results were so 

 unsatisfactory that this has been given up, and the 

 government is now devoting all its energies to the 

 production of palms from offshoots, for which purpose 

 large quantities are imported from Busreh each year. 



*Bul. Panjab Dept. of Agriculture, 1912. 



